Oct 07

Not to toot my own horn, but it was my birthday on Monday. It was a landmark one, my 30th, so I think I'm allowed some horn tooting. Thank you to everyone who sent me emails wishing me well! It was really great to hear from so many friends.

The birthday itself was rather quiet, due to it being on a Monday. During the day I went to the Botanic Gardens, which I'd been to before, but they are gorgeous. And free! The weather was beautiful in the morning, very sunny, but clouds blew in later and it got quite gray and cool. No rain though! So still better weather than I likely would have had in Amsterdam. Actually, in the weekend it was really warm, 30 on Saturday and 28 on Sunday. So I almost had summery weather on my birthday and I'm still kind of bummed that it wasn't warmer so I can say "it was hot on my birthday!" but it wasn't bad, so I can't really complain.

I got home and Wendy was there and we went on a long walk along the river with Molly, all of us getting some needed exercise. It was the farthest up the river I've ever walked, which still wasn't that far. Then I got some people together for dinner at Tiamo 2, an Italian restaurant in Carlton. A couple of people I know are out of town, or were busy, so it was only 4 of us, me, Wendy, and her friends who had the party out in the country. The food was excellent and we sat around chatting for quite awhile. A rather mellow, but definitely memorable 30th...

Friday was the slightly rowdier birthday celebration. Wendy and I went bar hopping in the city. If you look at a map of Melbourne, you'll see a lot of little lines in-between the bigger streets. These are the many alleys and laneways the city has. Some really are just an alley, with dumpsters and employees on smoke breaks, but a lot have hidden restaurants and bars. We hit a few of these hidden bars, finding some interesting places. The first place we went to wasn't in a laneway, but it had a great name: Spleen. We had a fun time there and I got a free birthday massage from a guy who was from a company doing on-the-spot massages in the bar (so, no, it wasn't as dodgy as it may sound).It was very much like the chair massages we got at Excerpta. One of the laneway places we found, I didn't even catch the name of it, but it was very cool and alternative and it looked small and narrow in the front, but the back had a dance area and that was packed with people. I liked being back there and not having much of a clue of where I was. We ended up at a great place called Gin Palace, very laid-back but classy, and we were there till they closed up at around 3. I was happy to have gone to quite a few of Melbourne's bars, since it's such a thing here, and we met some interesting people.

As a sort of birthday present, I got a job! A more long-term one this time, at least two weeks, but possibly until I start travelling. It is in the offices of one of Australia's main department stores, right in the center of the city. My first day was today and, despite starting later at 10, I am totally knackered. A lot of stuff to learn and my brain had to work too much. But the people I work with are really nice, so that's good, it makes such a difference if you at least like the people you spend the day with. It does suck though that we're in this old building and there's like no natural light. I try not to think about it, or else I start feeling depressed and claustrophobic, though it's a big space. I miss where I worked at my last job that had lots of windows and was on the 16th floor with views over the city. But I'll only be at this current job for at most 4 weeks, so I guess it'll be ok.

I thought I had more to say, but I can't remember it. I didn't do much in the weekend, partly cuz it was pretty hot. And I've found out how hot the house gets in weather like that. Stifling. Well, upstairs at least, while the bedrooms are downstairs and kept naturally cool. It's really like my parents' house and it reminded me of the times we'd hide in the bedrooms downstairs on hot days because it was so hot upstairs. Oh, and I finally managed to get some photos of the lizard that lives at the front of the house, but I don't have time to post any now. Perhaps something to look forward to next time. =)

New photos are up starting here, all from my trip to the zoo last week.

I had a pretty nice weekend with a lot of good food. I went out to the farm with Wendy; friends of hers who have a house nearby were having a little party, no real reason for it. It was this gorgeous warm day (which was hell for my allergies, being out in the country with a lot of grass and flowers) and a clear night. About 8 of us gathered at the friends' country shack where they had a nice fire going. It really is a shack, with corrugated iron walls and no electricity. But they don't live there, they live not far from us in Melbourne and just head out there on the weekend sometimes. There was a whole buffet of food: some yummy dips with Turkish bread, they grilled up some corn on the cob in their husks over the fire, there was lamb cooked in tinfoil and chicken cooked directly on a metal grill over the fire with rosemary and lemon. There was also homemade potato salad and a cheesecake from one of the cake shops on Acland St. We were happily stuffed bunnies with all of that. We sat around the fire for hours, chatting and having some good laughs. It was good to meet some more really great people. It was rather bright out with the half full moon, but I still saw so many stars. I had the southern cross pointed out to me, but it was a bit disappointing, smaller than I thought it'd be. I was very excited when I saw Orion's belt rising in the east. Stars I know! I saw the Pleiades as well.

Sunday was rather boring. It was really warm too, but overcast and humid. I went out rather briefly with Wendy to go to the local dump (quite the experience, esp with meeting some locals who were friendly enough, but definite country bumpkins and the guy helping us only had one arm) and I came back a miserable, itchy-eyed mess. I need to get some better allergy protection and some eye drops... But an aunt and uncle of Wendy's came over in the evening and we had a really good dinner with them, again leaving stuffed. Mmm, good food, and I didn't have to make any of it. =)

I've had a rather long week... Tuesday I registered with another temp agency and I hope they can help me out. The woman I met with was so nice, though I wonder if I was so chatty with her because I felt comfortable or because I was starved for human contact. I've spent the last 3 days working an office job doing various, mostly tedious, tasks at a health insurance company. I finally broke the run I had of only working a job for two days at a time; working for only two days is good for my sleeping in, but bad for my finances. I had actually worked before at this health insurance company just last week. They liked me so much they had me back. Or they had meaningless work to be done. It was a nice working environment, today they had some Friday drinks in the office at the end of the day. I found it funny that they do the whole casual Friday thing, also funny what some people wear on "casual" day. For one guy it was wearing a suit without a tie. Oooh. It was interesting to work there and find out a bit what health insurance is like here. It's seems more complicated than Dutch health care, and there's all this difference between public and private hospitals and what cover you can get in each one depending on your insurance. There isn't really that distinction in Holland, but then there isn't really national health insurance either.

On Monday I finally made it to the Melbourne Zoo. I esp planned to go then because it was meant to be a nice day. It turned out to be rather hot, the last forecast I had seen before I went predicted 24 degrees but it ended up being 30, heh (well into the 80s for you fahrenheit folk). Definitely the hottest day since I've been here. Good thing I put on sunscreen before I left, though I should have known it was going to be warm, it was pretty warm already before noon. Anyway, the zoo was a lot of fun, though because of the heat the animals were a bit inactive or hiding in the shade. I still saw quite a lot though. The zoo is good in that they have quite large areas for many of the animals, like the lions are in a pretty big area and a walkway goes over it so you can look over them. They have a good gorilla area as well, and a new male gorilla who was frightening and made me think of the Rotterdam gorilla who escaped. There's a really cool Australian bush section, with native plants and some red dirt from the outback. I saw some kangaroos close up, there's wooden posts to keep you on the path, but it's not really a fence, they can wander around freely. Some kids snuck under it and were petting a snoozing roo. I tried to learn to spot the difference between a kangaroo and a wallaby. It's difficult, wallabies are shorter (but then there are small kangaroos too) and can't stand up as straight as kangaroos can. I think the key is in the ears, roos have longer, more slender ears. I think. There were koalas as well, moving around quite a bit considering it was a hot afternoon, but then they had just been brought a bunch of eucalyptus leaves. There were some sleeping wombats, one sleeping on his back and everyone thought he was fake or dead, but I saw him move. I saw some echidnas as well, they sort of look like porcupines, but are egg-laying mammals like platypuses (and you say it "eck-kid-na"). Didn't see any platypuses though, nor any Tasmanian devils.

Speaking of animals, some evil bastard bug or spider or something bit the hell out of me Monday night. I'm kind of freaked out not knowing what it was, esp with all the poisonous animals in this country, but at least I don't think I got anymore bites after Monday. In one night I got at least 11 bites on my hands, elbows, shoulder, and even one on one of my toes. The bites are still quite visible, they didn't create quite as massive a lump as Dutch mosquito bites do, but they were itchy for much longer, I think a couple were still itchy this morning, 4 days later.

Oh and I saw a massive lizard at the zoo, not one in a cage, one just wandering through some brush near the gorillas. I only saw it for a sec before it crawled into the bushes, but it was not like those little things O and I saw in Italy. It could eat a couple of those for lunch. And we have a similarly sized lizard living under the front stoop of our house. I've been trying my best to photograph it, but it doesn't come out often, or I'm not home on a warm day where it might come out to lay in the sun. It's around a foot long. Very freaky.

A bit of a rant... In about a month Australia will have their elections, though the date was only decided about a week ago. I guess quite a few countries don't have a set election date, but I do find it dodgy that the people in power get to decide when to make the date that they possibly could get voted out of power. And the date chosen is on a Saturday, I find that different. Anyway, the guy who's in power now, John Howard, is an idiot, similar to Bush or NL's Balkenende, he looks so much an idiot you wonder how he's been in power for so long, and I can't stand to watch him on tv. So they set the election date and then what was on tv that evening: the first ads from Howard's party. Handy, to have the ads all ready because you get to choose the voting date. Also, the date was set last Friday and the deadline for registering to vote was Wed evening this week. That just seems a shocking way to do things to me. Anyway, I was going to rant more about how Howard's big re-election offer right now is to cut taxes and how easy a ploy that is, yet if it goes through how harmful it is, but I can't be bothered to write it all out. It will be interesting to see how the next month goes though...

I likely will spend the weekend with Wendy at her mom's farm; the weather is meant to be great and back to about 30 on Sunday. Hopefully I can post some photos next week.

The weekend seems ages ago, but I saw some great performances on Friday and Saturday as part of the Fringe. Oh, and on Wednesday I went to a circus thing, but I found it a bit disappointing. Some parts were really good though. Definitely different from your standard Ringling Bros. stuff, this was strange, modern-style circus.

Friday I went to a performance of a monologue-style story that I went to partly because it was held upstairs at the Vibe Bar, a place I wrote about before where I had a really nice afternoon just hanging out and reading. It was a cosy space, I mean it was quite large and with high ceilings, but the small audience of about 10 people (most of whom knew the guy performing) all sat in a semi-circle on couches and stuffed chairs. It was homey. The story was about when the guy lived in London for about 2 years and about this girl he would often see on the buses he rode into the city. It was a very simple story, but very well told and very touching. Along with it, some black and white photos of London buses were projected. Another performance I was very glad to have gone to.

The next night was puppet night; again, this stuff was not your usual kids stuff. The first show, Tyrannosaurus Sex, was a rock opera featuring a puppet penis who was feeling a bit... inadequate. It was very creative and funny, and I will never be able to look at a tyrannosaurus rex in the same way again.

The second show was called Pure Puppet Palaver and it was put on by a whole group of puppeteers and musicians. It was made up of various stories and songs using all sorts of puppets and techniques. There was the song by a Muppet-like character who sang of wanting to marry Annette, the marionette (haha). There was a Brothers Grimm tale about Death's godson that had some great puppets. Another thing featured Gary, the emcee of the evening, having himself closed up inside a huge paper bag, and then escaping from it and suddenly being dressed as a garden gnome. That one was a bit random. It was all a lot of fun though, there was a great audience, a lot of silliness and also some very beautiful parts.

I'm not sure if I'll get to any more performances, though it doesn't end till Sunday. I may go to a bingo thing tonight hosted by a woman who used to host a club night in Amsterdam, but I'm not sure yet if I'm going.

Last night I had some good bonding time with my housemates. Well, minus Wendy, she's at her mom's farm waiting for one of her horses to give birth. But it was my housemate Trav's birthday and he had some people over for dinner. I came home and they were getting stuff ready for when people would be there and I was thinking "great, I'm tired and they're going to have a party upstairs till who knows when..." but it wasn't like that, only a few people came over and they were all gone by 10 because it was a weeknight. I joined in, feeling a bit like I was crashing the party, but the people I met were really nice. One girl is from Sydney but dating a guy who is in Melbourne and she fell in love with Melbourne instantly and now wants to move here as soon as possible. Molly the dog got lots of attention and was spoiled by everyone giving her sausages all night. It's hard to ignore her when she sits in front of you and intently watches you eat. Later, after everyone had left, we (me, Trav, his girlfriend Dana, and Nick) were just hanging around in one of the living rooms and Molly was running around and being silly. Just before 11, we heard the sound of a crash. Nick heard it best because he was outside on the deck (inside we had music on). We all ran up to the main street near the house to see what had happened. It would not be a surprise for a bad accident to happen there because there is a pretty sharp corner and as we ran out we saw smoke and assumed something really bad had happened. It turned out though that this psycho guy had crashed into a couple of parked cars and was now in the grass on the side of the road, and he was trying to drive off and was telling us that he got hit and that the other car drove off. The smoke was from him trying to drive his car even though one front wheel was knocked sideways and was wedged against the wheel well so the tire burned when he tried to drive. Nick got out his mobile to call the police and the guy grabbed it away from him and told him not to call the police, but Nick did later anyway, though they took so long to come that I didn't see them arrive by the time I went to bed at least half an hour later. Dana said that she saw the main car the guy hit and it was really damaged, the whole side smashed in. It, and the psycho guy's car, were gone by this morning though when I went out to look at the damage. Another car that got hit was still there though, the body was pretty undamaged but one back wheel was smashed in at a bad angle looking like it was almost ripped off the axle. Some excitement to close off the evening...

Whoohoo, I have another short job assignment for next Monday and Tuesday. Sounds like another easy thing, something about stuffing envelopes with brochures or something. I kind of like these short and easy things, it's easy money and it's good to know that no matter how tedious it is, it'll be over in a couple of days, heh. Only bummer is that I had just started to make plans for going to the zoo next Tuesday, which would have been good because the kids are back in school and the weather is meant to be good then. But now I can't go and it's supposed to be wetter from Wednesday. Moo. Oh well, having money is good.

On Tuesday of this week I had to go into the agency getting me these jobs and register with them. I actually did some computer tests this time (I didn't at a different agency I registered with) and the results were good. I took a typing test, which was pretty average, but not bad for someone who doesn't really type properly. I took 3 Office tests, for Excel, Word and Powerpoint, and my results on those were really good. I had the lowest score with Excel, but that was because some of the questions were about doing things with formulas and I'm not that experienced with working with those. On both the PP and Word tests I got 34/35 (and I still think something went wrong with the question I got wrong on the PP test, so I think I should have gotten 100% =P). The woman testing me said I had one of the highest scores on the Powerpoint test that she's ever seen. Yay! It made me laugh though as I was taking the test, sometimes I didn't really know how to do what it was asking, but I just did what you often need to do in Microsoft: poke around the menus and find what looks like it might be what you're looking for. That's so often what I do at work, and then it was working for me on the test as well (though you only got 2 tries per question, so I was limited in how much trial and error I could do). Anyway, just giving myself a little pat on the back; it would have been a blow to my ego if I had totally failed the tests when I think I know how to use the programs.

One weird thing while signing up was specific for the job I did this week. I had to sign all this background check stuff since I was going to be working in a bank, sensitive information I'd be around and all that. A form called a statuatory declaration had to be signed, by me and a witness, but it couldn't be just any witness, it had to be someone like a justice of the peace or a notary. But the person who signed mine was a pharmacist in the pharmacy across the street from the employment agency. Pharmacists and "veterinary practitioners" can also be witnesses for the form. I found that really odd. O, do you know if pharmacists have that power in the Netherlands?

Anyway, now for an introduction. I had this idea awhile ago, well before leaving for Australia, of having some sort of little mascot for the trip. It's definitely a borrowed idea, but I didn't know what to use for a mascot. Then a couple of weeks ago I saw a photo of someone's Ugly Doll and I thought I had seen one here in a shop. I searched online and then last week I got a small Ugly Doll of my own at this cool little shop called Hudson in Balaclava. So, I would like you to meet my new companion on the trip, Deer Hazel:

His actual name as given by Ugly Dolls is Deer Ugly, but to make him a bit more my own, I'm changing his name to Deer Hazel. I got the name from one of the key rabbits in Watership Down, which I'm currently reading, and it's fitting cuz he's sort of a hazel colour. So now when I'm driving around New Zealand and Australia and I'm lost or bored, I won't be talking to myself, I'll be talking to Deer Hazel and he'll keep me company. =) He might also show up in photos occasionally.