So we have a room in a two-bedroom house. Our housemate's name is Nicqui and she's Melbourne born and bred. She's very friendly and talkative and seems to enjoy having us around, so we're getting on just fine. She's decided to move up to Brisbane until Christmas to be with her boyfriend while he works there, and visit her dad and little brother, so we're currently in the process of meeting (or "interviewing" as Nicqui calls it) potential new housemates to take over her room while she's gone. She trusts us to take care of the house and the plants and the fish and even offered to give Cory and I a discount on our rent if we'll be in charge of cleaning the place once a week. Score. We've made an offer to one couple (who also just arrived from New Zealand) but they're looking at other places so they'll let us know soon. We'll just keep meeting people until we find good replacements and everyone's happy.
In other news, Cory and I both found jobs with Kathmandu, an outdoor gear store similar to REI back home. Once we'd found a place to stay that was cheaper than a hostel, we made it our mission to walk around and spam our CVs to every place we could think of. I was aiming more for the cafe scene, looking for jobs on Gumtree and looking for help wanted signs in windows, while Cory was shooting for an outdoor shop, since he really liked working for Hikoi in New Zealand. We were wandering around Moonee Ponds, a shopping suburb just north of us, when Cory spotted a Kathmandu store and went in to ask if they were hiring. As it turned out, the current manager of that store had just been tasked with pulling together a sales team for a new store opening this week, and he needed to find a couple more good people to round out the list. In talking to Cory he discovered that both of us needed jobs and so made an offer to both of us. Yay! Not bad for only being in the country for 5 days. As of now the position is officially only part time, but this turns out to be better because it's hard to find full time work and easier to combine a couple different jobs to fill time and the bank account. Our boss Nick seems fairly confident that he can find us shifts at other store branches in the city (there are many) and so he says that while we won't work full time at one store, we may be able to pick up enough at other stores to make ends meet.
So. We had a day of training last week where we filled out all the paperwork and got to know the products made and sold by the company. We met two of our other team members, both also named Nick (I can see this becoming confusing) - one is from Belgium, spent a couple years in New Zealand with his wife, and seems fairly outdoorsy. The other Nick is Chinese Vietnamese and is here studying nursing - he seems very nice but not particularly interested in Kathmandu's mission of getting people out to play in nature. Hmm. We start work for real tomorrow, unpacking boxes and setting up the store from scratch, so we'll get to meet our other coworkers then.
The store we'll be primarily based at is located in Uni Hill, a factory outlet shopping center far to the northeast in Bundoora. You can take public transport directly there, but for us we'd have to take a tram to the city center first and then catch the other tram heading to work (the aforementioned difficulty of getting to the northeastern side of town). But we have bicycles for this very reason! Cory and I did a dry run of the ride from home to work and found out that it will be a good workout every day - 1.5 hours and 23 kms one way. There are bike paths to follow almost the whole way (Melbourne's good like that) and the terrain is not particularly challenging, but it's still a good ride. My butt will have to toughen up fast to deal with being on a bike seat 3 hours a day (haha). I'm sure half of you are saying "What?! Are they nuts?!" and the other half are saying "Well, that's just the crazy kind of thing I'd expect from you." I'm looking forward to the challenge and the excuse to get my body moving every day. Bring it on. Except when it starts to get up to 40 degrees C every day (stupid hot degrees F). Then maybe I won't like it so much. But the shopping center does have at least one staff bathroom with a shower. Sorted.
In between looking for places to live and jobs and bicycles, we've managed to explore a decent amount of the city. We've hit most of the major neighborhoods you read about in Lonely Planet, and so far we're pretty pleased with Melbourne. There are plenty of parks and bike lanes and trams and markets and restaurants and cafes. And people. Melbourne has more people in it than New Zealand does. Yikes. But with the people come lots of diverse backgrounds, and with that diversity comes a melting pot of cultures. There's a street dedicated to Italian food, and Greek food, and there's Indian food everywhere, and of course there's Chinatown. I even discovered what seems to be a decent Mexican restaurant (they make their own mole!) - we tried to eat there on my birthday but didn't have a reservation and couldn't get a table for over an hour, so we decided to save it for later and be more prepared. Means it must be good, though, to be that busy on a Sunday night. In the CBD, there are lots of shopping centers with food courts that are actually good. In one of them I found the most amazing Indian food ever. For cheap too.
The Queen Victoria Market is amazing. Especially coming from Ohau where we ate frozen veggies because a single "fresh" green pepper knocked you back $6 at the supermarket. At the Vic Market we got two massive beautiful peppers for $1.50. Yesss. Produce is good and plentiful and cheap. There are massive sections of the market (which takes up a few city blocks) for fruit, veg, cheese, meat, seafood, clothes, and other random things. And there's a stand that makes yummy fresh fruit and veggie juices. Me being the juice fiend that I am...I love it.
The one thing missing is meeting new friends, which we're hoping to do more of as we start working and expanding our network of people we know. The fact is, at the moment, I can count on one and a half hands the number of people I actually know in the city. We see signs for quiz nights and game nights and cheap dinner deals and keep thinking, "That would be awesome to go to if we had more people." Hopefully, soon we will. I keep forgetting that although it seems like a lifetime already, we haven't even been here three weeks, and some things take time. For now, I'm looking forward to starting work tomorrow and seeing where that takes us.
Oh! I almost forgot. In the spirit of keeping more in touch with the people I love, I talked us into buying a new phone. A fancy new smartphone that can get on the internet. Oh, technology. My lovely friend Riley introduced me to this program called Viber which lets you send texts and photos and stuff internationally for free. If you have a smartphone and you download the program. So I've done it and we're chatting and if anyone else wants to join me I'd love that. Let me know and I'll give you my digits. That reminds me of this skit, so I'll leave you with a laugh for the day:
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