It’s getting warm here in Melbourne. Today it hit 90, which was a bit high for my weak winter constitution. Our little backpacker hovel doesn’t have air conditioning, so I’m doing the next best thing and moving to New Zealand tomorrow!
My work contract ended last Friday, and in the past week I’ve wasted no time getting into vacation mode. I spent the weekend in Sydney, and was surprised to discover that I actually like it up there. Melbourne & Sydney have a fierce rivalry and usually folks like one or the other, but despite my love for Melbs I think I could really enjoy living in Sydney. I managed to pack quite a bit into the weekend – everything from a 10k coastal walk to some Prokofiev at the Opera House. And I even got to ride a ferry!
Back in Melbs, I spent a couple free days doing classy things like watching ethnographic films at ACMI and eating delicious meals. Then it was off to the Great Ocean Road for 2 days, where I took the above photo. Also, in what is beginning to be a trend, I took to the skies over the 12 Apostles, in a helicopter this time. Don’t worry, though – despite all this height-related tourism, I’m not jumping on (off?) the skydiving bandwagon just yet.
It’s kind of funny to be excited to leave a city I really like, but I think New Zealand is going to be great fun. And it certainly helps that I’m planning to come back here in a couple years. I’d write about my thoughts on moving around at more length, but I think the heat has completely fried my brain. Time to pack the carryon, I think, and drink some wine!
Stefan Sagmeister, designer extraordinaire, talks about his practice of taking a year off every seven years for creative purposes. Not that anybody should be surprised, but I enjoyed the hell out of this talk. We’re using it as kind of a catalyst to get our travel blog project off the ground – but more on that later, when we’ve got everything in place.
Despite some recent setbacks, I am still enjoying my time here in Melbourne. For those of you who didn’t hear, my camera (the big one) and mp3 player were stolen two weeks ago. I’ve managed to get replacements for everything, and it’ll be all covered by insurance in the end. But let me tell you – being without those things for a week and a half was brutal! I’m just considering it all a reminder that I need to be less comfortable and more aware when I’m overseas…
More excitingly, this month brought the Melbourne Arts Festival, which has been pretty much excellent so far. Peter Greenaway was in town for a couple film screenings, lectures, and most importantly, his installation around Leonardo’s Last Supper. In addition to all that, I got to see the London Philharmonic, and on Saturday I am going to a big event all about Tropicalia, with music and documentaries and such. So I’ve been feeling rather cultured lately!
Speaking of cultural activities… one of my housemates plays on a rec netball team, and since basketball was on break, I agreed to give it a try. I know I’ve always said netball is a sexist sport – take a look at its history, or perhaps this article – but I figured I’d give it a try, since it’s such a big thing down here. My current goal is to not suck at it, which is more difficult than it sounds. The sport just has SO MANY RULES! For example, when you’re playing defense, you can’t have your hands up, and you can’t be any closer than 3 feet from the person with the ball. “Intimidation” is against the rules. And before you start playing, the refs actually check the fingernail length of all the players. It’s hardly the kind of game you could ever play pickup, but so far I’m enjoying the challenge of learning a ridiculous new sport.
Oh, and I’ve got SIX WORKING DAYS left in the ENTIRE YEAR. Just to rub that in!
Henry the cat has taken to sleeping on my bed at night – something I have been heartily encouraging ever since I noticed the mouse scurrying across my room the other night. Given what we know about mice on toast and my lack of income, this probably isn’t such a bad thing, as it’s always good to have a backup source of protein. And since I am renting the room from a local slumlord named Ernie, who looks like Ernie of Bert &, I think it’s a pretty standard thing. But otherwise, I’m really enjoying the place; the housemates are nice, there’s a gas stove, and it’s close to absolutely everything. Also, I finally have internet at home! I’m actually splitting a mobile wireless usb thing with one of my housemates, which I wasn’t too keen on at first, but after a week sitting just outside Borders & leeching off their free wifi (too cheap to buy a coffee) I reconsidered.
Despite all that time on stolen internet, I’ve not yet managed to land a job. Even registering with agencies seems to be insanely difficult here. It doesn’t help that all the advertising work is in Sydney – which I knew, of course, and still decided to come here. I’ve only been looking for a few days, however, and am not too worried. There has to be a typist job with my name on it somewhere in this city! And I am registered with one agency already so it’s certainly not hopeless.
Apart from looking for a job, I’ve mostly just been exploring the area and volunteering with the film fest. There’s a bunch of cool graffiti up in Fitzroy, which is the neighborhood next door to me, so a friend and I headed over to have a look on Thursday. I really like the area – reminds me a bit of Capitol Hill – and the graffiti gave me a great excuse for a facedown:
Thursday night I went to pub trivia downtown with some of the work visa folk, which was fairly unremarkable except that it was run by a guy who looked like David Bowie with a euro-mullet and who was much too amused by one team’s name of “Quiz On Your Face” and additionally I came in second place in a beer drinking competition, putting my country to shame.
Pictures, if you’re interested, are on my Flickr of my various wanderings and my moderately slummy homelife.
Don’t ask me why I’ve swapped a Seattle summer for a wintery Melbourne, which is exactly like a rainy Seattle fall. We even had a thunderstorm today! But I’m here, and in the last 4 days I’ve managed to find a place to live, secured all the essentials (bank account, mobile phone &c) and, more importantly, secured a couple volunteer jobs at the Melbourne film festival. I’m helping out with the marketing/sponsorship stuff while I look for actual paying work here, and then when the fest starts I’ll be doing merchandising or something. I actually started volunteering today, just for a couple hours, and already have some free tickets! So suffice to say, things are going very well here.
By this point some of you may be wondering how the laziest person you know managed to get this far. Let me let you in on a little motivational secret: living in a hostel. Nothing like waking up at 4am to a screeching English girl in the room next door going on about how she can teach her roommates English even though she knows nothing about grammar because, in her words, “you can just talk and I can correct you when you make mistakes!” to give you the energy you need to get the hell out. It was when she started lecturing them on the definitions of tangerine and tambourine that I put my bitch hat on, knocked on her door, and informed her that American for tangerine is ‘shut the fuck up.’
Actually most people in the hostel are pretty cool, and I’ve made friends with a few German girls. We’ve gone exploring in St. Kilda, cooked a big group dinner, done the obligatory drinking, and apparently tonight there is going to be karaoke? Don’t worry though, I won’t destory any foreign eardrums by singing myself…
Seattle had a “heat wave” this week, which means I picked the best week ever to be unemployed (or funemployed as the SF Weekly would have it). I decided against a list of things to do before I leave – instead, I’m just taking a bunch of walks. So far, I’ve walked to the International District, Madison Park, Sculpture Park (via a pint at Kells), Eastlake, and Pike Place. On the list: U Village (today!), the waterfront/West Seattle water taxi, and most ambitiously, Green Lake. And I’m not just getting some nice walks in – I’m also learning important Life Lessons!
In other news, my 4 month Australia visa finally came thru yesterday. It’s amazing how much easier it is to get all the admin stuff done this time around – I’ve already applied for my tax number online, and in the next couple weeks I’ll have my local bank account and mobile phone all squared away too. Not much left to do!
