Chuck Another Brim on the Barbie
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Showing posts tagged exploring
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Fast forward
If you have been keeping up with this blog and you know me then you will know that I am actually a week behind with my posts. That was mainly due to China being mental and me being slightly exhausted. What I’m going to do is actually condense the week that I am late by into this single post. My reasoning for this is that I want to make the blog more current and that in the last week, not a great deal has happened but things are starting to get fun now and I want to be able to write about them in a current way. Without further ado…
First days in work are always a bit of a nightmare. This one was made easier by the fact that I wasn’t starting a new job but made harder by the fact that I am in a different continent where I don’t know anyone.
Davide (my boss/co-worker) met me in the lobby of the building and took me up to the 30th floor. The first thing I noticed as I walked in was the view. It was amazing! Our office has a great, almost unobstructed view of the coast, harbour and sea.
The rest of the day was a pretty standard first day; meeting people, filling in forms and working much slower than normal. The highlight of the day was setting up my bank account. I know that sounds boring but when you have dealt with banks and their process as much as I have (I worked for one for about 3 years), you dread having to go there. The branch was actually in our building and everything was so easy! UK banks take note!
I’m going to skip Friday entirely as nothing of note happened. Nothing at all.
Saturday was iPhone day. I really wanted to get my hands on the iPhone 4S so I got up at 6am, ready to travel to the Apple Store and queue up. I actually missed my bus and ended up getting a train, McDonalds breakfast and a bus to get to Westfields Doncaster (a lot of places seemed to be named after places in The Grim North of the UK).
I eventually get outside the Apple store at 8:45am and there is already a queue. I used their free wifi on my iPad to pass the time before 2 guys who worked in the store came out to tell us that they didn’t have an 4Ss in stock. Balls. I grabbed the bus back into the CBD for a wander around.
I had a good wander, I visited the following places:
- Federation Square - A sort of general meeting and gathering place. The local art museum is there and there is usually going on outside for people to watch.
- Federation Wharf - Just the other side of the river from me, it’s a nice grassy area to just chill
- The place that the people following the ‘Occupy Wall St’ campaign have decided to set up camp, right outside Starbucks.
- Queen Victoria Market - A really cool market that sells a bit of everything. I bought some bread and cheese. Very tasty.
Sunday involved more wandering and I managed to find a cheap shop that I could buy another visitor travel plug (I only had 1), some chopsticks (I’m getting into it now) and some cheap drinks (Pepsi Max for only $1.75!).
Monday and Tuesday were pretty much uneventful. My work rate was finally back up to a decent level on Monday. It seems jet lag had hit me, just when I thought I had avoided it! I was also back in the gym both Monday and Tuesday. Taking it a bit slow as I try to ease myself back into it.
The photos I took on Saturday while I was wandering can be found here. Note: at the time of writing they are still uploading. Be patient :)
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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.
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Looking back - Exploring
Here is the second part of my recap on my short time in Melbourne. This time I’m going to talk a bit more about the things I have seen whilst here. Once again I have chosen four pictures out of the pile of photos that I have taken (both with my camera and with my phone). I’m likely to be rambling (just like the last post) but it’s Christmas Day and I can’t be bothered to plan out a proper narrative for each post so I’m just going to type words until everything that I wanted to say has been said.
Anyway…
As I said previously, living in Freshwater Place was awesome and one of the reasons for that was that there was always something going on in the courtyard below. I was working one of the weekends in October and on my out to work I notice this:
There was around 20 muscle cars parked outside of the building, with the owners either leaning up against them trying to look cool, furiously polishing them or keeping hawk-like eyes on kids with sticky fingers that came near their treasures.The muscle cars, as you can imagine, were all pristine and impressive. There were all the old American favourites there; Dodge, Cadillac, Pontiac and other. I’ve never really been into classic cars but this was a rare treat and the first thing that I noticed was just how huge all of these cars were. My first thought was “how the hell do you park these things?” but I imagine ease of parking is the last thing on the minds of the owners when they are thinking about their cars. My favourite was a 50s hotrod with the full “ridiculous flames” paint job. I should have taken a picture of it really but I was already late for work and was in a rush.
This was just one of the many things that happened outside of Freshwater Place. One of my favourites (that I never got to participate in because of work) was a mini-golf course set up to promote Kinect Sports: Season 2 on the XBox 360. There was also an old woman who took free Tai Chi classes every weekday morning. Little things like this made living at Freshwater Place interesting and you didn’t have to go far to “explore” what Melbourne had to offer.
Halloween was on a Monday this year. Why is this relevant? Well, it means that everyone would be going out for Halloween on the Friday or Saturday as that was the closest weekend to the 31st. I thought that going into the city on the Sunday morning after would be a good idea because it would be nice and quiet as everyone would be hungover and recovering.
When I got into the city (I was pretty much in the same place where the photo of Flinders Station from the last post was taken), I saw some people walking along the street in their Halloween costumes. I thought nothing of it and put it down to “walk of shame”. I look further up the street and see masses of undead looking people and start to wonder if I have drifted into a filming of the Aussie version of I Am Legend. Nope, it was the annual Melbourne Zombie Shuffle. Thousands of people in their Halloween best had shuffled all the way down Swanston Street to Federation Square. I crossed their path just as they were getting to Fed Square and snapped a photo on my phone:
Unfortunately, my picture was hastily taken and doesn’t do the scene justice. Imagine around 3,000 people dressed as zombies walking down a street in the middle of the day chanting:What do we want? BRAINS! When do we want it? BRAINS!
Amazing. Most of the costumes were really impressive but the best had to be a guy in a full suit of armour, helmet under his arm and his face zombied up. Next year, I am definitely attending!
So far I’ve talked about exploring and have only really mentioned me walking around the city and bumping into things of interest. I did venture out of the city centre, I just spent most of that time getting lost:
My first “big trip” out of the city was to go to the Westfields Shopping Centre in Doncaster (same brand as the UK). The reason for this was that the iPhone 4S was out and I wanted one! I have bought the cheapest pay-as-you-go phone shortly after arriving and was already sick of it. When talking to my Dad on Skype he mentioned that I actually had a worse phone than him. That was the last straw!
The Apple Store in Doncaster opened at 8:00am and was around 90 minutes away by tram + bus. I got up at 6am and went to the tram stop next to my building. This was the first time that I had attempted to catch a tram since getting here and it didn’t go well. I later learned that I was in the wrong place (you essentially wait at a little barrier in the middle of the road). In knowing what my luck was like, I had already planned an alternative route, train + bus. I walked over the bridge to Flinders and grabbed the train to Lilydale and then a bus to Doncaster SC. 7:45, I hope there isn’t a queue! There was, but it wasn’t too big so I jumped on the end. 8:01 and an Apple Store employee comes out and tells us that they don’t have any stock and we should try again another time. I woke up at 6am for nothing! I had a wander around the shops but didn’t want anything else so promptly got a bus back into the city and then walked back to the apartment. What a fail!
I think my initial encounters with Melbourne’s public transport system are reflected in this photo:
What I am trying to say is that the tram is really confusing when you first start using it! The network map is not nice and simple like the London Tube Map but is just a mess of lines that all seem to be the same colour and are never going the way you want to go.My favourite public transport “chump move” was to get the tram going the wrong way, thus ending up somewhere I didn’t want to be and somewhere much further from where I wanted to be. I did eventually get the iPhone (I reserved it on the internet and then went in to pick it up) and this made things much easier. Maps plus GPS plus MetLink Route Planner equals not getting lost nearly as much.
One of the places that I explored first is Albert Park. If you’re a Formula 1 fan, you’ll know that Albert Park is where the Australia Grand Prix is held. It is also a huge park with a massive lake. I spend a lot of time in Albert Park (playing frisbee, more on that later) and have come to love the place. It is such as nice place to be even when the weather is rubbish. Just to try and give a feel for what the place is like, I have this picture of the lake:
I could probably spend a long time talking about Albert Park (and will spend some more when I talk about frisbee some more) but it would be really boring to do so.I will say what my favourite thing about this place is: there is so much going on. Most parks are quite quiet and peaceful place. Albert Park has spots like that but is also the hub of recreational sport in Melbourne. I was walking through one day and decided to take note of just how many different sports were being played on one day. The list was huge; soccer, Aussie rules, cricket, rugby, ultimate frisbee (of course), swimming, sailing, gold, rowing, running, cycling, baseball and tennis. I’m sure there were more that I just didn’t see too. Amazing place and I love spending time here.
I can’t write a post about exploring without mentioning the beach. Melbourne has it’s own beach in St. Kilda. To be honest, as beaches go, it isn’t the nicest or the biggest or the best. But it does have the beach and everything that comes with it. St. Kilda is full of interesting stuff and people. There are so many bars and restaurants and even more vintage shops and art galleries. St. Kilda is definitely a young persons place and I can’t think of anywhere better to live in Melbourne (more on that one later too…).
A few honourable mentions of my exploring go to:
- I went surfing for the first time in Torquay (about 1hr 30mins out of Melbourne, you may have noticed that a lot of place names are stolen from the UK). I loved it. The weather was terrible and my surfing skills were non-existent but I loved it all the same
- The various markets. There are a few big markets in Melbourne (Queen Vic, Prahran and South Melbourne are the main ones) and they are all interesting to walk through as you always see something new and there is always somewhere nice to get some coffee of a bit of lunch
- There are also loads of smaller parks and gardens around Melbourne. I’ve been trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible when not working so I can quite often be found in one of these places reading on my iPad and just enjoying life
I did say I’d be rambling didn’t I? I’ll summarise this post now so that I can get on with the next one: Even after 2 and a bit months of living here, I am always finding new things to do, see, eat and drink. It’s strange that London is a much bigger city but doesn’t feel like it has to be explored like Melbourne does. I’ve said this to Mum and Dad recently; at the moment, I can’t imagine me wanting to live anywhere else.
