Busy day

It's been a very productive and busy day. And a very beautiful day. It was about 25 degrees (upper 70s for you Americans) and perfectly clear all day. It was a bit breezy, but I think that's what made it warm, the wind was from the north, meaning it came from inland as opposed to the sea. Well, that's my theory anyway based on what I know after living here for 4 days...

Anyway, this morning I went over to the visa agency office and printed off my CV and made a list of places I wanted to hit up for a job. I spent the early afternoon walking up and down two main streets in suburbs just north of the center of Melbourne. I handed out about 6 copies of my CV, not too bad. Some are more promising than others, like one place, a bakery, is actually looking for a sales assistant, but the woman I gave my CV to didn't think they'd hire someone for only 3 months. Another place might not have an opening for a couple of weeks. One place that was pretty promising, but only offering parttime work, was a place I just popped into for a bit of an energy boost. It was a "chocolateria", a place serving churros with chocolate, along with bonbons and ice cream. As I was paying, I thought to ask if they might be looking for help and she said "actually, yeah." It seemed like a nice place to work, but yeah, only parttime probably. She said she'd give me a call later and she didn't, so we'll see if she even gets back to me. But I applied at places ranging from Borders to a gelato shop in the Italian part of town (do I get bonus points for being a quarter Italian?) to a bagel place called, funnily enough, Beans and Bagels (for the non-NL residents, in Holland there's a chain of bagel/coffee places called Bagels and Beans). Tomorrow I plan to head to suburbs south of center and hit more places.

One suburb I went to today is called Fitzroy and the main street, Brunswick, reminded me a bit of Hawthorne in Portland (and confusingly there's a Hawthorn here, but it's spelt like that, without the e) but it's much longer, which was fun because I walked up one side of the street and back down the other. My legs are very tired (especially because they have hills here! I've missed hills, but my legs aren't used to walking up them). Anyway, Brunswick has so many cool shops and cafes, I definitely have to go back when I'm not in job hunting mode.

Things have gone quite well on the housing side of things. I didn't go to the house I had mentioned before, the girl had to move the viewing to Sunday, but I saw a different house in the meantime. This morning I had placed an ad on a site I'd been checking for housing saying I was looking for a room and I got a call in the afternoon from a guy who was leaving a room free for a couple of months. I just checked it out this evening, it's in the aforementioned cool Fitzroy area and it's shared with two other guys, though one apparently is never there. The bedroom is huge and you can crawl out the window to a balcony. There's also a roof terrace. It's a bit rough around the edges, all roughed up, badly painted hardwood floors, but the space and location are good.

I'd probably have said yes to that room if I hadn't had gotten another call before I went there for an offer of a room in a 5 bedroom "mansion" with views of the river. It sounds amazing: huge garden, close to center, big furnished room AND within my price range... The girl I talked to sounded really nice as well and the way she described the house sounds like how I like to live, not a party house, everyone's responsible and respectful, people are around my age, so not too studenty or anything. She was particularly keen on my ad because she's living there with two guys now and she wanted another girl in there to balance things out, heh. Anyway, I go to see it tomorrow afternoon and it almost sounds too good to be true, but if it is as amazing as it sounds, I think I know where I'll be living! Stay tuned for more on that...

I took trams for the first time today, it's pretty easy to figure out. Most of the trams are much shorter than Amsterdam trams though. Short little things. I found out today though that it's not bush fires that are a danger in Australia, but bin fires. Coming back from job hunting, I got off at my stop downtown and there was a garbage bin across the street full-on engulfed in flames. Most people just seemed to carry on with their business until the fire department came to put it out, then a little crowd watched as they blasted it with a hose. A weird bit of the day, apparently something to write home about...