Chuck Another Brim on the Barbie
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Showing posts tagged st. kilda
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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.
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Looking back - Finding a New Home
Part 3 already! I’m impressed with my own ability to aimlessly type so much. I was given months of free accommodation in Freshwater Place by the company. I’m on a relocation scheme whereas all the other guys I work with here were on an “extended overseas assignment” which meant that they have been living in places like Freshwater for over a year. Free accommodation and living expenses for a year! Due to a number of reasons, the extended overseas deal was ending so everyone else had to move onto the relocation policy that I was on. This meant that everyone in the office was now looking for somewhere to live at around the same time as me but they had the luxury of not paying rent for the previous year.
Anyway…
Firstly, I’d like to say something about the real estate setup in Australia. My very first point is that I don’t like it. Finding somewhere to live in the UK is hard enough but here you have all of that plus competition thrown in. When you are looking to rent/buy a property here, you don’t just contact the agent and they show you around. On the agent’s website as well as the meta-estate-agent sites (think Rightmove in the UK), for any given property there will be a specified “inspection time”
What this means is that you turn up at the given time with all of the other people who are interested in this property and all look around at the same time. If you like the place, you submit an application form and 100 points of ID (this bit particularly annoyed me as each agency would have different point values thus making the system entirely arbitrary). If the agency and landlord like you, they call you up and congratulate you like you’ve just got into Harvard on a scholarship.
I ended up going to see so many places and arranging my weekends based on what times I could go and see various apartments. This meant essentially ranking the places based on poor photos and descriptions because it isn’t possible to see all of your short listed flats in one day because of the awkward timings and travel time between each place. I am thoroughly glad that the whole process is over because it was such a pain. Rant over.
I had decided early on that I wanted to live in St. Kilda. My reason was fairly simple; it was where the beach was. There were other minor reasons such as not being too far from work and being a vibrant place to live but there are lots of places like that (e.g. Fitzroy) but none of them had the beach. I mean who wouldn’t want to live close to this:
One of the places that I saw early one was disgusting. It was advertised as a one bedroom apartment but was in fact a studio that someone had thrown a brick wall up in the middle of. What I’m not so subtly trying to say was that it was very small. It didn’t even have room for an oven. There was a sink and one of those microwaves with the rings on top and that was as far as it went with the idea of a “kitchen”. On the plus side, this was the view from just outside the building:
It looks like all those photos that you see of places like Miami and Malibu on TV. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t fit all of my stuff is somewhere so small and it was very, very basic (read as dirty and unequipped).On the same day I had another 4 inspections planned and saw lots of places that I liked. One of them I wasn’t even going to look at but Mum and Dad sent me the link via email and I managed to get an inspection all to myself!
I’d scouted the St. Kilda area a few times before and had been to some of the iconic sights such as the pier (first picture), the Esplanade and Luna Park.
Luna Park is really strange. I think if it didn’t have the instantly memorable entrance that it would get closed down. It is your average rubbish seaside fairground and reminded me of the carnival level in Left 4 Dead 2. But on the plus side, you don’t get much more memorable than this:
On the right of that photo there is a white building. That’s The Palais Theatre. The Palais seems to be where all of the comedians of the world perform if they come to Melbourne. Eddie Izzard recently did a few nights there as well as Ross Noble. Tim Minchin is there in February and I am hoping to get tickets as he is one of my favourite comedians for a number of reasons.Back to my inspections. In all honesty, most of the places I saw were either too small, too disgusting (there was a lot of wood chip wallpaper going around for cheap sometime in about 1701 it seems) or out of my price range. My solution? Increase my price range. I’d worked out that with all of the overtime I was putting in on the weekends, I would pretty much pay off the difference per year between the places I didn’t like and the places I did. It came to something like 3 shifts of overtime for the year would do the trick. Awesome.
I was actually accepted to one place that I was about 70% on. I had just put in an application on another place and liked it much more. Not being entirely sure, I decided to try and back out. I called the agent to say that I wanted to pass. I was informed that the “paperwork was already being done”. I then informed her I hadn’t signed anything and that she had told me only the day before that being accepted isn’t binding in any way (this is so that they can back out on you and then say “well, we told you we might do that”). I was amazed at how personally hurt this woman was. She spoke as if I had just killed her cat and then stuffed it with the body of another dead cat. I almost ended up taking the place just to end the conversation.
I then remembered the one thing that always works when in a foreign country (apart from speaking louder and slower if someone can’t understand you, of course). I played the “ignorant foreigner” card. She eventually realised that she couldn’t penetrate my wall of feigned ignorance and backed down. One nil me.
I had now put all my eggs in one basket. Sure, I had over a month left before I had to move out but I wanted to get this whole process over. The agent ended up calling me back the same day to inform me that my application was accepted and to ask me to the office for some tea and scones (it was more to sign the contract and there was no tea and no scones).
The place I ended up taking? Naturally, it was the one suggested to me by Mum and that I only went to see on the off-chance that it would be good. It also helped that I had a gap between other inspections that day. I’m not sure if they know or remember (they will do after reading this) because I haven’t had any of the usual “Mum knows best” lines thrown my way yet.
P.S. I wanted to include this picture because the mural is cool. I also wanted to include it because it is just across the road from that flat that I’ve been talking about. I couldn’t find anywhere in the rest of this post to fit a reference to the Talbot Reserve. It’s a very small park and there isn’t much there, but here is the picture anyway:
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Looking back - Settling In
This will be the last of my little updates. I dare say that I’ll do something like this again but I’m not sure when or if I will have anything interesting to say. I guess that is what this post is about. I’m really settling into Melbourne life and as such life is becoming routine (not a bad thing, my routine is awesome). I really don’t want to be blogging about everyday boring stuff and that’s the reason that I tailed off before.
The main thing I have to say in this post is in this picture:
Merry Christmas all! I took this photo on around the 20th December and really wanted to send it as a Christmas card as it has Christmas with a Melbourne twist (Flinders Street Station and a tram!). Alas, by the time the photo was taken, it wouldn’t have reached home before the clocks changing!
How am I settling into life in Melbourne? Again this is another one that is easier described by a picture:
I took this yesterday while sunbathing at St. Kilda. Playing all this frisbee has left me with such a ridiculous tan that I now look a little like a zebra (Hannah said that first). I’m trying to even it out a bit with some sessions at the beach listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast (I know, I’m about 2 years behind on this one. I’ve never really done podcasts before now). I’m using the fact that I’m worried about my silly tan as a good measure for my quality of life. To put it another way; life is good.
I’m really settling in and I love living here. It is just such a nice place to be and to live that as I said before; I can’t see myself wanting to live anywhere else for a while. Another reason I don’t want to move is that as you saw in my last post, I finally have got my flat furnished and equipped to a good standard and I don’t like the idea of having to do that again for a while!
With regards to my flat I only wanted to show the (nearly) finished product but there was a stage where my flat was just filled with cardboard and plastic wrapping. For at least a week, there was this huge amorphous blob of cardboard in a giant plastic bag that took up half of my living room:
I finally managed to get rid of all of the cardboard on the day that I hired a car. I took all of the cardboard to the local recycling centre and all of the plastic went in the bin bit by bit. I wish I could say that I’ve gotten rid of all of the moving in rubbish but I still have the boxes from the giant box of kitchen stuff that I bought. It will all go out eventually, little by little into the recycling. Luckily, the shipping company unpacks all of my stuff and then takes the boxes away!
I’ve decided to keep this one short because all of the others are short and people have better things to do on Christmas day than to read my blog so I am going to finish on yet another of the St. Kilda sea front (have you discovered the theme yet? I LIVE BY THE BEACH!). Yes, about 40% of this picture is car park but if you look closer, the car park is mostly empty on a really sunny day. This means that not only do I live by a beach and in an awesome place, there is also ample parking :)
