Anywhere but England... apparently

It feels like I've barely got my foot in the door of one country before I've got my eye on another.

Yes, I'm talking about the fantastic news (for me) that I have been accepted onto my Masters course in America! ***High Fives*** *!% LOTS OF SCREAMING %!*

I am so frickin excited about it. I mean on the one hand it's sad because it cuts my year in Australia down to 5 months, but I looooooooooooove Mississippi. Alright? I looooooooooooove it. I miss it massively, giganticly, stuPENDously, because I had such an awesome time out there. The quick run down is that I applied through a scholarship which pays for all my tuition, and gives me a job in the international student office while I complete my 2-year masters course. I am signing my life over to Ole Miss for the next 2 years. And you know what that means. 2 YEARS OF AWESOMENESS! That's 2 years of great weather, 2 years of funny accents, 2 years of touristy trips, 2 Spring Breaks, 2 years of Olive Garden!!! AAAAHHHH!!!

And so much more.

Anyway, this blog is meant to be about Australia....

Oh, I tried on 2 t-shirts today, one with Australia on the front and one with the British flag.

I bought the British flag.....

WHAT?? It looked better. I'll find something Aussie soon. I need this for when I go to America. So that when I walk past someone out there with a British flag on their top (they really love those tops) I can say "Hey, are you British then?" And usually they would say "No". And then I can say "Ha! You threw tea at us (vague summarisation of the Boston Tea Party) but you still go around wanting to wear our flag, where as I, a true Brit standing before you, wear my own flag, in a show of patriotism (except I am trying to live anywhere but England)".

It will go a little something like that.

Oh yeah..... I veered away from Australia again.

Well, a cockroach sat on my arm while I was typing away at work yesterday. I thought it was a hair which had fallen out. Just about broke the windows with my screams. Seriously, cockroaches and spiders are out to get me here.

Anyway, since my last post I actually haven't got much more to say about Australia because I go to work everyday, and then I come home to my non-Australian housemates and then we go for meals at Thai restaurants.... actually I could be anywhere in the world right now. Sydney as a whole isn't very Australian to be honest. I need to go to the bush or something. This weekend I am determined to film lots of fun, beautiful things while I walk around the city trying to burn the calories I have consumed this week in the form of chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. Typical, I cut out the diet coke and take up a new unhealthy addiction. And it's a MAJOR issue right now because this here is Easter season and there are Easter Eggs EVERYWHERE.

I. Love. Easter. Eggs.

Hollow chocolate is the best things since strawberry liquorice. Seriously.

So this is just a mini update about mostly non-Australian related things. Normal blogging will resume after the weekend.

TTFN!

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

(Side note: MARCH 14!!!! Why did they wait till the 29th to tell me???)

We All Have Unlucky Days

Yesterday was...... interesting.

You know those days where an accumulation of events create a problem and you just think "how did all those coincidences come together?"

Well, some of the things that happened were admittedly unrelated to one another. Like the fact the workload was so freaking busy that day that things totally skipped my mind (actually maybe it's related after all! I will explain in a minute).

For example, things like at work organising a courier for several parcels to go to 9 different addresses. I maybe-sort-of forgot to cancel one of those items when I was asked to after I made the booking, which meant this morning when I walked in the front door of my work and saw the couriers I thought "shiiiiit! hope this isn't important enough to get fired over."

Well, I'll never know, because although I wouldn't say I was an unusually lucky person, things do tend to work out for the better with me (eventually). When the courier company rang to tell me I was going to be charged for the "futile attempt at pickup" (bit exaggerated, calling it 'futile'. It's not like the couriers braved through fire and brimstone in order to reach my workplace, only to find that the parcel had already been eaten by a dragon), my guardian angel sprinkled some magical fairy dust over the lady on the telephone who then apparently read to the bottom of the piece of paper in front of her and realised the couriers had still picked up 8 other things from us, so it wasn't 'futile' after all them coming to see me, and I think I got away with it.

I'm sorry, that wasn't a very exciting story was it? But yeah, even those little things can sometimes send me into a tizzy and then I'll just worry worry worry. Anyway, the point is yesterday there was a 'disaster' and today it worked out.

Maybe you'd be more interested in my spaz attack when I backed into a spider's web? Disaster number 2, and yeah, it's exactly as it sounds. I backed through a gate pulling a cardboard bin (a bin full of cardboard, not a bin made of cardboard.... but anyway) and backed straight into a MAHOUSIVE spider's web. This would be enough to freak me out at the best of times, but this is AUSTRALIA. Spiders KILL people here. And I pass great whopping angry looking spiders everyday on my way to work so I could only imagine what might be on my cardigan about to eat me.

Turns out I missed the thing by CENTIMETRES and then after I stopped yanking hysterically on my clothes and hands trying to get the web off and making certain there was no spidery thing on me, I had to take a running jump through the gap in the hedge back out onto the road, kind of like how you jump onto your bed so whatever's underneath it doesn't have the chance to reach out and grab you. I mean, I'd just destroyed this spider's home. Hours and hours, maybe days of work. I wasn't going to find out how it would exact its revenge. Then I noticed the van standing at the traffic lights, the driver and passenger openly watching me. When the passenger waved, I waved back and walked calmly and collectedly into my building where I proceeded to freak out all over again in my re-enactment of my brush with death with my colleagues.

So, then I left my phone at work. Tres frustrating, but I could deal. It was one of the things that sipped my mind because I was so busy. Anyway, I decided to celebrate the fact that it was payday since I had remembered my purse at least and I went out to get pizza. Yum. And it was, as I sat eating it on my doorstep 20 minutes later because I'd been locked out the house without a key.

In the rain.

For 2 hours.

Yeah.

After 2 hours one of my housemates eventually turned up and I was so excited! (and cold)! Except he also... didn't.... have a key.

After a further 10 minutes of convincing him that scaling up the palm tree beside our house to reach the roof and climb down onto our balcony was a bad idea (after all, I had no phone. If he broke his neck I couldn't call for an ambulance. Also even if I did have my phone, I don't know what the emergency services number is..... I should find that out....), he rang around a bit and we managed to get in contact with one of my housemates who was AT HOME THE WHOLE TIME AND DIDN'T HEAR ME YELLING!!!

Yeah. So, I eventually got in, warmed up and ate the rest of my pizza, went to bed, and started the new day with a clean slate. Today has been absolutely fine.



And I remembered my key!!!!!

Flat Finding Fun (not)

So, flat hunting.

It's a completely different experience searching for a place on your own as opposed to finding a place to live with a group of friends. It was a case of signing up to many many flatmate websites and searching on gumtree.com.au everyday (I sacrificed a few hours of facebook time for this). There were certain ads you knew to stay away from, for example, the ones that advertised rooms with pictures of four-poster beds in the style of Henry VIII, ones that said "hav room availabel. plz call after 6pm only 04** *** **", and the one that had the Taj Mahal as one of its pictures (we're not stupid, people!).

As I searched for houses, my standards slowly lowered and lowered. After all, Sydney is an expensive place so I was already wincing at the fact that my budget was 3 times what I paid in England per week. At first my aim was a place near work and the city, low rent, my own room, Australian housemates and a nice tidy house. This turned into aspirations of a place near work and the city, sort of low rent, a shared room with one other person, and at least a few Australian housemates. This transitioned into a need for a place near work and the city, the best rent I could get, and a shared room with anybody.

I saw so many places of all shapes and sizes that I literally lost count. During the day I would line up about 4 or 5 places max to see after work, and I would go everyday for almost 2 weeks. They all had their benefits and drawbacks, but the drawbacks were usually things I couldn't really live with, like having a bunk bed in a 1 bed apartment where the owner lived in the bedroom and the bunk beds were in the living room/kitchen. I can't live in one room . For a few weeks, hmmmmm maybe, but not for 3 months+. And one place advertised an "own room," which turned out to mean a landing with a mattress on the floor and 2 sheets stapled to the ceiling to make 'walls'. Yeah.

It was especially hard to choose considering I was already living in a clean and tidy 2bed/3storey house in the lovely suburb of Balmain. But I needed to move, the simple reason being that I would come home from work and.... watch tv. In silence. And not speak to anyone until the next day. And it's kind of hard to meet new people that way.

The house I eventually picked is... interesting. It's seriously close to work, a 10 minute walk max. I share a room with 3 other girls on bunk beds (as the newbie, I get the top one). There's not much room for my stuff as you can imagine with 4 girls sharing a room, so I'm going to need to ship a lot of it home (which I have to do anyway, as I am over the weight limit for my suitcase already. And I need to go shopping at least twice a week to stay alive). It's not really the cleanest or tidiest place in the world, and cooking might be a bit of a nightmare with 10 people trying to find room.

So why compromise?

Well, you see, I'm meeting people now! The other day I went shopping with Saki (Japanese) and Jee Eun (Korean). That night I had dinner in Darling harbour with Jee Eun, Edouard (French) and his Marie and Valerie. The next day I celebrated St Patrick's day with them, Saki and Alex (Italian). It would appear that yet again I have fallen in with the international lot, instead of the "natives" of the country, just like America, but I'm completely fine with that. I've been there less than a week and already I can tell they are a fantastic bunch of people. This trip is now officially going to be awesome.

And THAT'S why I compromised.

TTFN!

On my flathunting adventures, I saw this...... the dog I expected. The pig? Not so much.

Of Jobs, Jetlag, and Walks

Do you want to know what an Administrative Assistant for the Social Inclusion Unit does when she is a casual temp worker?

Check facebook.

That's the main thing I've done today, apart from a bit of printing and a brief respite tidying the stationary cupboard. I am allowed to check facebook, by the way, I was told that on my first day. I was just told not to use it excessively. Thing is, if I'm not on facebook excessively, I'm just staring at the computer inbox, willing someone, anyone, to send an email that I click "forward" on, for another colleague to actually deal with. I'm not complaining. The people are nice, it's pincy easy work and I'm being paid quite a bit to do it.

Okay, so I never thought I'd say it, but I miss the shredding days of Portmill Surgery to where I'd been banished because I'd been harassing people for work and getting in everyone's way. I've asked if I can help anyone with anything here a few times. "Not at the minute," is the answer every time so far.

Oh right, I probably should have started my second ever post with "I got a job!! As an Administration Assistant at the Social Inclusion Unit for the University of Sydney." Well, there it is. I am very happy with it, and it's for a month while they recruit someone more permanent (someone with a longer visa). Then I will be given something new. The people are nice, some a bit more distant than others. A few greeted me, peering over their computer screens, and have been firmly and silently stuck behind them since. They are there when I arrive and still there when I leave... hmm.... and yet no one has anything extra for me to do...

It's very relaxed, not too formal, I am allowed to amuse myself by reading gossip stuff (Daily Mail Online, none of it is actual news) and looking up how not to get ripped off by Australian internet companies!!!!!!!!

Ahem.

And I love the social stuff, that's what I was hoping for. The cafe culture without the language barrier of France. The endless Asian restaurants without the language barrier of... all of Asia. Basically Australia has all the stuff I like and still speaks the same language, seeing as I non comprende anything not in English.

Actually, understanding Australian people on the phone is proving a bit of a challenge. That accent is hard sometimes!

But anyway, I love the social culture stuff. Like today, I took a super early bus because of morning work traffic, and when it turned out there was no traffic (or I was just too early for the Aussies) I went to a cafe and had a pain au chocolat, and read a book before work - not a whole book, I wasn't that early. I WOULD NEVER HAVE DONE THAT IN ENGLAND! Partly because all cafes are Costas or Starbucks or Cafe Neros in my area. Bloody corporate chain so-and-so's! And partly because I never want to get up in the morning in Eng-uh-land. My parents will attest to the fact that I have timed getting up to the latest possible second in order to get to work literally just on time.

Don't you find there's something about being abroad that just makes you like being awake better?

Not that I was very successful at staying awake when I first started work. I felt so awfully sleep deprived I would skip lunch and use the break to go and sleep an hour in the park. There we were, couples, families, and me in my business dress which promised on the label it wouldn't creased (and didn't, SCORE!), sound asleep lying on my phone so it wouldn't get pinched but would wake me up so I didn't get fired for leaving halfway through the day.

Also, I do walks now. Oh yeah. But not your average romping through the countryside (I think romping might not be the right word here... but I will leave it), breathing in the fresh air, getting attacked by flies and mud caked to your shoes.

Oh no.

This is city walking. Where I often pass shops that I want to browse inside, and cafes where I dart in for a drink, and a pretty building which I take a picture of, and usually my walks somehow always seem to include the Sydney Opera House. Beat that, Fields of Ickleford! That's more my kinda style. I'm a city-girl through and through.

So now I need to leave you to get busy busy busy with installing a printer cartridge. It should hopefully be complicated enough to take up the full hour I have left at work today. I shall leave you with this photo of Circular Quay, which featured on my walk.

TTFN!

Next time......... The Pain and Desperation of Flat-Hunting.

Of Introductions

So, welcome to a blog about your favourite subject. Me.

No, not you, me!

Just as a fore-warning, nothing very clever is going to be written here. I'm fairly philosophical as a person, as philosophical people go, but it all stays in my head. Where it's safe.

This blog will solely concern the day to day life of living in Australia - Sydney to be exact. The thing about travelling abroad on your own is that you need an outlet for the things that you would ordinarily comment on to your travelling companion.

"Man it's hot out here."
"What kind of animal is that?!"
"Is it me, or does the bridge look smaller in real life?"

By entering my thoughts into this virtual world, I hope to better my life, and yours. No I don't, I'm kidding. You can read it or delete it. To be honest this is probably more for me than you. Or more for my parents, so they can see what I'm up to. But if you're interested, then great! Bonus!

So... I guess that's it for now. Following posts will hopefully be a lot more interesting. Or hopefully slightly more interesting. Or hopefully holds your interest enough to read to the end of the blog.

By the way, "What kind of animal is that" was a mahousive bat that turned out to be a flying fox. And the bridge does actually look smaller than the aerial shots you see on tv. It's still big! But not as big. TV definitely adds 15 pounds.

And man, it's hot out here!

TTFN!