Australia Entry #2 - April 11th to April 27th 2024

I left for the airport on April 11th to leave the US and start the next big adventure of my life. I still don’t think I’ll ever understand how much time I need at Newark. Some days, like today, I was able to get through customs in around 30 minutes. Other times, I need over an hour and there’s no rhyme or reason to understanding what kind of day it will be. I downloaded a few TV shows and movies and got a few books ready on my phone for the journey. Dune Two was alright, but I didn’t fully get the hype. I would say it was slightly better than Dune One, but it’s mainly a story about the world and politics of the world, instead of the characters that inhabit it, which I more often prefer. Kung Fu Panda 4 was passable, but nothing special. I was also planning to watch Pan’s Labyrinth, but I got a Spanish version so I quickly went away from that one. With a 6 hour layover in San Francisco, I spent some time listening to some music and just waiting for the time to pass. I read a bunch of “Wiser, Richer, Happier” by William Green and enjoyed the break out of each chapter being about a different person so I could put it down and find something else when I wasn’t feeling it. I had a middle seat on the 15 hour flight to Australia and I got some sleep in, but I tried to convert it over to Australian time for when I should be sleeping.

The first week went by pretty fast. After landing, on the first day I walked around a bit to get used to the city. I lugged my two large suitcases, one carry-on suitcase and one backpack 30 minutes or so to the hotel. I probably should have figured out a bus or something, but I’m a cheapskate and didn’t want to deal with figuring it out. The hotel room was like a full apartment, with a full kitchen and living room for around the price you would get a US hotel for, so if these compare to others in Australia, hotels are probably better value here. The rest of the first day was spent going to a grocery store to get a few items for lunch and dinner, and then getting my phone set up with Optus. I also took a walk to see my new apartment complex in person, met the building manager and made sure that nothing was missed in terms of paperwork or planning while I was still in the US. I tried to set up my bank as well, but it was closed over the weekend.

Day two, I made a larger grocery store trip to an Aldi that wasn’t too far away, but was going to be the one I was using long term as it was close to my work and I also checked out our office lobby and surrounding area. I spent a lot of the rest of the day searching on Facebook marketplace for furniture and ordering a mattress and bed frame for when I would eventually get my apartment on Friday that following week. I walked around to some other areas around the city as well. I personally enjoy opening up my google maps app and finding a green area, be it a park or bike trail or section near a river and just finding my way over there, so I did something similar and explored a few parks as well as some other places where I was possibly looking to get an apartment at to just explore parts of the city.

On Monday, I woke up at 4 AM due to jet lag and made some lunch for work early that morning. On my way to work I saw a hot air balloon (I would see more on Friday from my hotel balcony) which felt like a good sign for a great new beginning. It wasn’t a Ho-Oh at the start of Ash’s Pokemon journey, but I’ll take what I can get haha. Work was pretty slow as I was getting myself situated, but a lot of the folks that I spoke to so far weren’t actually in the office that day. My move mentor Houston was out, my team lead Cory was out, and my coworker Brian was out. I decided to take a few hours of out of office time to finish setting up my bank and I also needed to walk over to my apartment because for once, Amazon shipping was too fast and I needed to tell them to try to redeliver on Friday as I didn’t have access yet, but the folks doing the deliver where understanding and friendly. After work throughout the week I spent my time scouring Facebook marketplace for more furniture pieces (I was able to find a couch for $420 AUS) and watched some 3 Body Problem on Netflix.

The rest of the week flew by as I learned about all the Australian and Singapore customers at work and prepped for my move on Friday. Friday morning I left for work early so I could take my smaller carry-on suitcase and some bags over to pick up my keys. I wasn’t expecting to be woken up by a fire alarm at 1 AM on Friday though, which made the rest of that day really long. Anyway… I was pleasantly surprised that my apartment came with a fridge and washing machine as I wasn’t initially expecting that it would. Between work I also left to help move the couch I purchased into the apartment at around 1 PM that day and some other furniture that was arriving throughout the day. Once work was over, I walked back to my hotel and packed up my other two suitcases and walked them over 30 minutes to the new apartment. My hotel was ending on Saturday morning so I decided it was likely better to walk them over in the evening when there was less traffic than during a Saturday morning. I also spent more time at the apartment that night to open up my mattress-in-a-box to let it inflate and be ready for use the next night. Then I walked back to my apartment and crashed for the night, at around 1 AM.

Saturday morning I woke up around 7 AM and headed down to the lobby to check out. I spent most of Saturday building my bed from the Amazon packages and cooked a few meals for the weekend. I did inspect the apartment and took pictures for the inspection report that I needed to fill out. Sometime in the afternoon I decided to take another walk this time to the other side of town where I was at to see the Edinburgh Gardens (which is not actually any gardens but just a public park). It was a nice day and a worthy walk. I also found a guy who was selling some plants on Facebook marketplace so I decided to walk over and buy 4 for $30 AUS (or $20 USD), and it made my apartment feel a bit more homey. That night I was also able to find a lady on Facebook Marketplace who flipped storage lockers by buying them at an auction and then selling what they held for a profit, and she had some desks for sale. A big plus was she was fine with delivering, even though she lived an hour away, because she did this pretty much for a living. We went back and forth a bit and I decided it made more sense for me to take a trip out to her by train to see what other things I might be interested in to get a big bulk buy. We landed on me arriving at 4 PM on Sunday because she had some other deliveries to make earlier that day.

I decided on Sunday that I would make a bigger trip out of my train ride up to South Murang, as I saw that there was a nice park (Plenty Gorge Park) which had kangaroos just hanging out in the wild over there. I cooked some chicken and a salad for lunch and decided to leave around noon for the train ride. I really enjoyed the houses around the area, and it was a lot more suburban than the inner city of Collingwood. After speaking to the lady, I learned that her rent for her entire 4 bedroom house there was the same as my one bedroom apartment ($560 AUS a week or $1700 USD a month) which made me get a little bit more hope in the country as a whole because I am definitely over paying for what I am getting here, but you have to deal with the cards you are dealt and I’d rather be walking distance from the place where I work than pay $3 USD each way every day to commute by tram. The train ticket was also $3 USD for a one-hour ride, so I’ll definitely be using it whenever I can to explore the surrounding areas near Melbourne. When I arrived at South Murang, I spent a few hours walking around Plenty Gorge Park and was able to see some kangaroos in person as well as quite a few varieties of what we would deem as exotic birds (colorful parrots, herons, etc.) during my walk. I then met with the lady and got a bunch of kitchen supplies, a broom, a vacuum, an ironing board, some pots for my newly purchased plants, two tables, two comfortable office chairs (that don’t swivel) and one office desk chair that does for $350 AUS (or $230 USD). Quite a good deal if you ask me. The rest of that day I spent cleaning parts of the apartment and the new items I got. Near the end of the day I found someone on Facebook marketplace again that was selling his computer so I walked not too far over to check it out in person and introduce myself. Crazy coincidence that he would be moving out to the States (Long Island, NY) in a month while I just moved here, so we kind of swapped places. He would later help move the computer, along with two monitors on Thursday, which was a national holiday, Anzac Day.

The rest of the following week went by without too many interesting things happening. It mainly pertained to me coming in to work, and after work coming back and cleaning more of the items I got. My physical bank card came in the mail earlier that week so I got to use that without having to get hit by foreign transaction fees each time I took money out of the ATM to buy some other cleaning supplies, groceries, and household essentials (toilet paper, cutting board, tea :))

Today is Saturday morning. I plan to make a trip down to the CBD, aka the downtown part of Melbourne, to pick up a keyboard and mouse that I’m purchasing (again from Facebook Marketplace) and am going to spend some time walking around the Yarra River that flows through the city. There are a few botanical gardens nearby and I think a nice day is ahead of me. I got a new phone before my trip out here and unfortunately location services with google weren’t set correctly to show different trips and paths that I’ve walked around the city, but I’ve corrected that this morning and hope to add some cool maps and routes to future entries. I’ve done that before with my travels around the world and would recommend it if you ever find yourself abroad.

Some things I’ve noticed as pros and cons around Melbourne throughout my first few weeks here:

Pro: Playgrounds and public spaces look a lot more funded.
Pro: There are plenty of exotic and noisy birds that make walking and just looking around fun.
Pro: A lot more things are open outdoor concepts. Restaurants and buildings are built around opening up to the outdoors and having plenty of outdoor seating areas. Some cafes are literally garages where the garage door is open and then it’s decorated like a living space within.
Con: The pedestrian crossing sign only shows you when you can cross if you press the button.
Con: There are a bunch of cafes and lunch spaces, but I’m not fully interested in spending $700 a month on eating out to explore them. I’ll probably just cook more often.