Chuck Another Brim on the Barbie

Seaside living - Sat 22/Sun 23 Oct 11

Saturday

Waking up at 8am after going out and knowing that you’ve got to be out of the house very soon is not a good feeling. Nonetheless, I dragged myself out of bed (earlier than usual for some reason) and hopped in the shower. I think showers are the greatest cure for hangovers, it is just that building up the courage to stand up for any length of time when hungover is a big deal.

I actually made into work about 10 minutes earlier than I had any other day that week and was feeling somewhat chipper! Work was pretty slow, the work that I have got left at the moment is all the low priority stuff that takes an age to find what the problem is. It’s strange how the high priority problems are always the easy fixes!

Half the day rolled by and I started getting hungry. There were a few guys in from the dev team to monitor performance over the weekend or whatever dev teams do these days. The Tech Lead, Stu, informed me that there was free lunch downstairs on 18 for all of the weekend people to enjoy. Free lunch? I’m there!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t there early enough it seems. Most of the food that was left was already cold. Still, I’m not going to pass up some free Nandos so threw some chicken, spicy and non-spicy fries on a plate and jumped back in the lift to 30.

After eating, I felt like I had much more energy and the rest of the working day passed without any real incident.

The weather had once again been a bit British, with an average temperature of 14 and lots and lots of rain. I didn’t do much for the rest of the night bar watch Wales lose to Australia for the 3rd/4th place play-off in the Rugby World Cup and watch some TV that I had downloaded. Sunday didn’t have much promise either and with being exhausted from work, I didn’t plan on getting up early.

Sunday

When I woke up I was surprised to see the sun blazing and the skies clear. The forecast said rain and highs of 19 but were completely wrong. By the time I got up it was midday and my laptop told me that the temperature was 25 degrees!

I didn’t have anything planned for the day so decided to hop on a tram and go to Albert Park and St. Kilda.

I wanted to go to the park to take pictures and St. Kilda to scout the area as I want to move there when I get kicked out of Freshwater. I got off the tram at the top of the park and walked around the lake for a bit. I took a bunch of pictures that I’ve yet to upload. The lake area is really nice and I could have quite easily just sat around there all day.

I wandered through the rest of the park and tried to take some pictures of a baseball match when the battery on my camera died. As I was now at the bottom of the park and my camera had died, I made my way to the nearest main road and jumped on a tram to St. Kilda.

The tram dropped me off right by the beach and I had an instant thought that I was in LA. I have never been to LA and these thoughts were entirely based on TV but still; palm trees, beach and good weather. Sounds great, no?

I wandered down to the beach and found a little grassy hill to sit on. It was strange that there were loads of people around but still lots of room on the beach. I guess the day was considered cold by the local’s standards because there were only 3 people in the sea. Probably all Scottish.

On my grassy little hill, I laid down and read a chapter of my book on the iPad. It was really nice just to relax while taking in all the sounds and smells of the beach.

After I’d finished the chapter that I was on, I went for another little walk and found a market of sort selling lots of touristy crap like boomerangs and digerydoos but also some really cool artwork and photographs.

At the end of the road was Luna Park, I really small fairground that reminded my of Barry Island in Wales. It was a little smaller but a lot cleaner than Barry and was fun to walk around exploring. Being a small fairground, it took at most 10 minutes to see everything so I was back outside wondering what to do next.

By now it was about 4pm and I wanted to be back for the Rugby World Cup final so I hopped on a tram again and was back in the city centre after about 10 minutes.

I wandered around the city a bit, looking for somewhere to get some coffee. I gave up on that when I noticed a Target and walked inside, curious as to whether it would be any less expensive than everything else seems to be.

I guess Target can be described as an equivalent of a combination of Primark, TJ Hughes and Matalan. Quite budget and doing a bit of everything. It was actually quite reassuring to go in and see that when I do move, I’ll be able to pick up a lot of basics for a reasonable price.

I left Target through a different exit and stumbled up on a coffee stand that was nice and cheap (see the theme here? Australia is expensive!) so grabbed a latte and was off.

As I said before, I was trying to get back for the rugby so started making my way back to Freshwater. I couldn’t resist the smell of Subway so grabbed a foot-long Italian BMT that I planned on eating somewhere near. I ended up walking all the way back to Freshwater to eat and perched myself right next to the Subway in our building. Another small fail there.

Rugby time! I quite enjoyed the game and would say that I am enjoying rugby more in general these days. Perhaps it is the fact that it is the world cup and the standards are higher, who knows. During the game, I had a quick Skype with mum and we were discussing things like furnishing a place when I get one and things like that. It was a nice chat especially as I hadn’t spoken to mum since the weekend before. We both decided that I should have a look around Ikea on Monday so I had a look and planned to go straight after work.

After a largely uneventful weekend, I slipped into bed still feeling exhausted but like I hadn’t done anything all weekend.