Australia Entry #4 - April 28th - May 12th, 2024

Introduction

Compared to my first two weeks in Australia, the last two weeks have been a lot calmer. I decided to take it slow this week as I’ve been backing up one of my colleagues’ customers as they flew out for Epic’s XGM conference back in Wisconsin and so I was the front-line Server Systems person available for three customers for the last week and a few days the week before. I got myself accustomed to going to the grocery store after work before arriving back home to make it an easier walk and I had another big day of cleaning as a few kitchen supplies came in to help me with meal-prepping.

Weekend Activities

Saturday, April 27th was quite an eventful day as it started with me having to go downtime to pick up a keyboard for my newly bought computer. The girl I bought it from lived downtime in the QV Melbourne which was this big shopping center where I guess the third and fourth floors were reserved for actual residents. There was a food court on the ground floor, some shops for the next two floors and then elevator access to things like laundry and gyms and the apartments themselves. It was a nice atmosphere, but I very much expect the prices to be absurd to rent over there. Afterwards, I decided to take a walk down to the river and the royal botanical gardens, which were quite pleasant as it was a nice sunny and warm day. On my way back home, I passed near the sports centers and actually ended up near the arena at the time people were rushing in to get to a game. Huge crowds and everyone wearing their teams colors. Australians take their sports seriously it seems.

On Sunday, I took a walk to explore one of the smaller libraries near my apartment, but didn’t find anything I liked. It was a small and quiet building, but I’ll likely try to find some time to head down to the big popular one downtown on an upcoming weekend.

I’ve started watching a few shows recently now that my computer and TV are set up how I’m used to. I’ve really enjoyed the release of “Dark Matter” on Apple TV and it’s two episodes so far. I was also able to finish watching “Barry” during the weekdays and kept up to date with “X-men ‘97” and “Sugar” which have been releasing on Thursdays.

Saturday, May 11th, I met up with some coworkers and took a bus down to St. Kilda to play volleyball on the beach. It was a very nice atmosphere and yet another warm and sunny day. I know that my legs will be aching for a while from all the tournament games we played, but it turns out that the season just ended and they hosted this one off event on a Saturday because the weather was nice. I will definitely be joining when the season restarts later in October.

I had been looking to find good ways to meet some locals and did some research online for a few things I was interested in going to, but didn’t have a chance to these last two weeks as I stayed at work a bit later than I needed to in order to make those timings. The one I am most interested in is a bushwalking club that meets downtown and goes out to some hikes and trails around the Melbourne area. They all pitch together to get cars or buses to the start and end of the trails and make a half-day event out of them on Sundays. Seems fun and I’m hoping to introduce myself on Wednesday!

https://mbw.org.au/mbw_index.php

I also plan to consolidate grocery expenses out here into a spreadsheet for myself to compare with how much things cost back home. It’s been really hard to ground myself with prices for food as there’s a conversion for AUD to USD, but also a unit conversion of lbs to kg or to 100g as a baseline. I don’t think I’ve yet overpaid absurdly for any groceries, but there are some things that I just don’t know if they’re much more expensive than in the US at this point, or if the prices are generally comparable.

Images and Videos

Link here