After I came home from Sayulita, I washed my clothes and within 28 hours I was back at the airport for our flight to Melbourne. Al desperately wanted to miss the Olympics so I agreed to go for a week to get him into the country and then come back for 31 days in order to volunteer with the Olympics and finish up some final things here in Vancouver. So Al and I had a whirlwind week of job interviews for me, apartment hunting for us both and general getting to know the area.
We found a short term furnished rental prior to arriving in Melbourne and so all we had to do was pick up the keys to our place and go there once we arrived. We were both dead tired after almost 36 hours of waking. I barely slept on the flights. Al actually doesn’t remember much of what happened from our stopover in Adelaide to the morning after our arrival. We were the walking dead at that point. We showered, went out for food and then fell into bed. The next day we went downtown to secure a mobile phone and an internet stick. The apartment is a few km south of the central business district in St Kilda and is very eclectic and easy going. Really close to the beach, shops, bars and restaurants. We had originally decided to rent a house about 15-20 km from the city centre but when we went out there on Sunday afternoon to check out neighbourhoods we decided that we liked St Kilda so much that we would change our goal to rent an apartment in St Kilda. That was a big decision for us and I think that it is a good one. We are planning to live life without a car and so being in the heart of a busy community is essential. We thought that even in the further out communities things would be walkable but they really aren’t. Commuting would not be really pleasant. A friend of Al’s who lives in Melbourne said that we would hate the “burbs” without a car and he was right. I had two job interviews on Wednesday and got an application package all filled out for a nursing agency. I think the interviews went well and they asked for my references at both in order to check them. Keep your fingers crossed!
We went to see an apartment that was close to the hospital I want to work at but is far from the beach and shopping so we decided not to apply for it. The apartment rental market is tough for renters as there is a really low vacancy rate in the city. You have to do so much prep work for each apartment viewing and basically be prepared to apply to live there when you see it. There is no luxury of thinking about it. You have your application, references, and bank statements all ready to hand in before you have even seen the place in person and then once you see it at the fixed inspection time you give in your application package. Al has spent hours prepping letters and applications for the few places that he has gone to look at. I think we nixed one really sweet apartment due to price which was in our range on the internet but was actually 130 more per month. Sneaky bastards. I think that they want you to go there and fall in love then when you love it you will pay more to rent it. I was pretty exhausted by Thursday and so we took it easy from apartment hunting and went for a nice walk and took a tourist bus on a tour around the city. The tour confirmed for me that I definitely want to live in St. Kilda, it is so funky and alive. I did still get a lot of disapproving(?) looks at my tattoos though. I was pretty surprised as I thought that most Aussies are pretty tolerant of body mods. I think that the amount of tattoos is less though, particularly for women. Oh well, I’m not going to stop getting tattooed because of some stares, I will have to be a bit more conservative at work though. The people I work with have known me for so long that I don’t think that they even think of the tattoos anymore. I will just have to build respect by working hard and keeping the tattoos to a minimum until people get to know me. I didn’t take many photos but Al has taken a lot and they can be seen at his blog http://oz.algauthier.com/
