Hope you all had a great Christmas in July, heathens

I feel like I should have more exciting stories for all of you at home, but moving overseas is incredibly un-glamorous for about the first month or so.  Especially since I’m planning to be abroad for so long – it’d be stupid if I spent through lots of my savings in my very first city.  So, I’m in cash conservation mode, which doesn’t really make for good blogging.  But here I am anyway…

Speaking of savings, I discovered a couple of exciting bargains this week, in celebration of our lord and savior and when he got all born again in July or whatever.  (Yes, I am talking about Hulk Hogan, aka Santa with Muscles)  Movies here are usually really expensive – like over $15 expensive – but on Mondays everybody goes infomercial sale crazy and things get cheap.  The cinema across the road goes down to $6 before 4pm and $8 after.  So Mondays are now officially cinema days – I’ll see any old trash for $6.  It’s my hip excuse for seeing Harry Potter this week.  (The verdict?  Better than a lot of them, except the third of course, which was a real movie.  It was overlong and the usual bla bla blas about Harry Potter movies but not bad for the price!)  The other bargain was pretty good, too.  Melbourne’s having an arts festival this fall and Fischerspooner are coming thru for a night as part of it.  Unlike most cities, where arts festivals generally mean inflated ticket prices and stupidity, here it means I get to see them for $17.  When you consider it’s at their Paramount or Moore-sized theatre and one US dollar is worth $1.25 Australian, it basically means I win at life.  So ha.

In other arts news, the film festival started this weekend, which means I’m now spending a couple days a week hawking merchandise and attempting to use a credit card machine.  I also have an excellent slate of movies lined up; just came back from the first one, No One Knows About Persian Cats, which I quite liked.  The audience were rather IMDb-like and stayed until the end of the credits…  Volunteering is actually pretty nice – in a 4 hour shift I do about 30 minutes worth of work and spend the rest of the time socializing or reading a cornucopia of free books on my Kindle.  If the iPhone gets to be the jesusphone, does that mean the Kindle gets to compete with the bible and be called the jesusbook?  Because I am plowing through the public domain – just finished the entire Sherlock Holmes library and am now halfway through Gulliver’s Travels.

Other than books and movies and obsessing about money I spent my week twice getting drunk with the housemates, once by sheer chance, and swearing off beer.  Did you know that for the price of one pint of beer at a bar, I can buy a whole bottle of Jacob’s Creek Shiraz?  Did you know that a six-pack of beer costs $17 here??  I never imagined beer would be so expensive in Australia, but it is, and I am coping sullenly.  Good thing I like wine!

Oh, and I have a job interview in the morning, and I think I really want the job, so here’s hoping I don’t fuck this one up!