Alas, the fun's started.

Lack of updates due to lack of sleep, mental brain power, and coherency to make a post.

In fact, sort of tired right now to update with anything substantial. My second week in Melbourne has been unforgettable thus far due to the inclusion of Melbourne Welcome. In order to divulge into the full details of this I'd have to kill this blog. Therefore, the PG version will instead be described.

Met lots of people, learned about the city, partied quite a bit (with wine because I'm classy, cough) and got sunburnt in the process. Worth the $540? Um, yes. I can't imagine how it'd be here if I didn't do this program and met some amazing people..even though most are Americans who think I say "about" differently. Deal with it, Canadians speak proper English.

I'll give a proper update soon enough when things die down. I still need to find professors and advisers on my courses here, problems are arising quickly.. Everything has to be manually done here for Exchange students so it's a bit of a hassle. I'm taking this upper level Ecology course (or trying to) without any real prior knowledge in it. I think I'm way out of my league here. Good thing it's on a pass/fail basis.

Domesticated = Me

Due to Esther's arm still being in cast, I've taken on the role of homemaker in the apartment.. That means all cooking, cleaning, washing, and grocery shopping is done by yours one and only, me. Not that I mind too much, but one night as I was scrubbing the pan at the sink I felt an odd sense of WTF. It was weird. The situation just became a little bit too..surreal, ha. I'm not meant for this. Once that cast gets off, I am not doing dishes for another month..minimum :)

Anyways.. My first and second weekends here were spent at Box Hill South. Just a couple of snapshots of the area and weird animals you definitely do not see back home.



(side note: I'm really stingy on internet/updates because I'm paying $50 for 3gb of bandwidth over 2 months, it's way too expensive over here)

On Sunday, we went off to the Caribbean Market, why it's called the Caribbean Market when most of the vendors are either Asian or Caucasian is beyond me. There are lots of things to buy here, sort of like the Richmond Night Market. Fresh produce, expired chips, knock offs, souvenirs, etc.. It was in the mid 30s this day though. We left around noon and the place was only getting busier and busier. If you don't go early enough, the produce is all gone.

We headed back to the city for lunch at some upscale-ish cafe. There are many many cafes here in Melbourne. I'll be trying many of them out during my stay here. I mean this literally, there are honestly countless hole in the wall cafes scattered around the downtown core. You go into random alleys that an obese person wouldn't be able to fit in, and you could find the best Moroccan, Chinese, Indian, French etc.. food.

Just a couple of snaps of the city including Chinatown, the area where I'm a block away from.



I like taking pictures from the view we get. I should do a day by day of the same view..the weather here is crazy. But, too lazy :)
Our first cooked dinner. Food bills are going to run me to the ground, I can already tell. At the moment I'm following the Canucks game online. I miss me hockey and Olympics. I don't care how much it costs me internet-wise, I'm going to be streaming the hockey.

Okay, I have Melbourne Welcome, this orientation program for International students, coming up tomorrow till Wednesday. Hopefully I'll meet some more people my age and get myself even more acquainted with Melbourne. School starts on March 1st.. only a couple of weeks left! I'm slowly welcoming the idea of school, it's been a while since I studied or took any notes.

First days

I'm alive and in one piece. Stepping off the plane in Melbourne I immediately felt the heat. It wasn't overly humid, but definitely a huge change from Vancouver. I was in jeans and a teeshirt.. already I was sweating from just moving my luggage out of the terminal.

Here's the first picture I snapped of Melbourne. Gorgeous eh?

I traveled to a suburb called Box Hill South where it's basically Richmond in a nutshell. Extremely Asian (Chinese) here and .. yea, pretty much all Chinese everywhere. One of Esther's relatives kindly welcomed me into their homes (HUGE HOUSE..) and took me to the mall to shop for some initial necessities. This shopping cart consisted of ~$350 worth of stuff. Things here are not cheap..

The second day we moved into our apartment. APT 1710/39 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne 3000, Victoria, Australia for those who want to mail me anything good :) Apartment size is pretty decent. I will say though.. the area I'm in is extremely Asian as well.. Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Indian cuisines were abundant everywhere. I've had more Asian food these past couple of days than I have in Vancouver. I tried desperately to look for white man food today for lunch. I failed. Apparently, there aren't many in the Downtown core. :'( I want a burger damn it.

Living room+Kitchen

My room

View from our apartment. After the first day, it's been raining *lightly* here. The weather does change constantly throughout the day. It was extremely windy .. The weather was about 20ish degrees today, a nice change. I went out in tees and shorts whereas everyone else was in jackets..

Oyaku Don for dinnarr last night, too lazy to cook just yet.


We went to Sofie's today for dinner. It's like Antons, but the Australian version. Holy hell, their portions were HUGE. A small pasta was more than enough.. I can't imagine how a large pasta would be. The weird thing is, the prices were dirt cheap. $12 for a meal that two can share. We all had the Gelato to share. I'm not sure if this picture does it justice, but it was a good 8 inches high..packed full of chocolate, hazelnut, pistacio, orange, strawberry, chocolate mint and.. something else. $6.50 only... Now this place, I can afford.

Now in Box Hill South again, went around to the surrounding suburbs like Glen Waverley and.. something else I forget. Was a bit awkward to take pictures of people's houses since I didn't know them (they're Esther's relatives'). But all of them are mansions..and under 1 million each. I want I want.

First leg: Brutal-ish

So I'm currently awaiting my flight to San Francisco.

Check in was brutal. Brutal. Brutal. The initial parts were okay..nothing too bad. Luggage put through, tickets/boarding passes printed. Fine. Then came the first security check point. I've brought along a duffel bag as my carry on and a small little shoulder bag as my second "personal item".. The guy at the security check point looked at my duffel and told me to put it in the cage, ensuring it would fit in there. It sort of didn't, so I tried explaining to him how I've never had trouble with it. He wouldn't take any of it. I was getting a little nervous because I have a lot of important stuff in there. So I flattened it and mushed it and put it in finally, tearing off the sign in the process..shh.

He glares at it, and says it's fine but my shoulder bag HAD to go into my duffel in order for it to go through AND I had to put it in the cage again. I was pissed. There are signs up all around the counter saying we're allowed one carry on bag and one "personal item" such as a laptop bag, purse, stroller..etc. This douche bag at the gate says "you have two BACKPACKS, you can't go through"

This other guy with me was in the same situation, he had a small backpack and a regular sized one, and he wouldn't let him through either. So we started bitching this security guy out, and some other agent comes out. We argue with her, and I'm livid because the guy now says my duffel is going to be too big anyways and I can't go through. So once again, I shove the bag into the damn cage to show them it fits and then he says "but your other backpack isn't in there"..

I proceed to tell him off, "look, we are allowed a purse on the plane. I don't care if you want to call me gay or whatever, go for it. This is my purse and unless you're saying all those signs out there are wrong, I'm taking it on. Now let me through." By now he was going a bit red in the face and threatened to call security. I called him on his bluff, he never did.

The other woman finally lets me through. This entire process took about 30 minutes to deal with. They blamed the Americans in the end, "this is their policy, not ours." Uh, more like, "we are incompetent, illiterate, uninformed, ignorant idiots that don't know how to flipping run a security check point."

Then there was some crazy man in the holding area who had to deal with some medical insurance/visa bill issue last minute with his dad on the phone. The guy was in his 30s.. and kept going, "Daddy, I'm scared. Daddy, tell me you love me. No, you have to say it. Say it again please, I don't want to fly away now."........ HOLY HELL. That was very disturbing. Everyone around me was snickering.. can you blame us? Thankfully there's no cell phone service on the plane because he was on that phone for a good 20 minutes.

Anyways, United flight to Sydney was a pretty tight squeeze.. not the most comfortable. Not gonna lie. Didn't want to take pictures of the food.. it was THAT cramped. Funny though, on both flights (to SF and Sydney) a medical emergency arose.. I wish I had my First Aid certification, then I could put on my light and be like, "yes, I have medical training" :)

Errrrrr... okay. In Melbourne now.. shopped all day for food and necessities with Esther's Aunt and then housing at her cousin's for the time being. Will update tomorrow when I move in to our apartment.

Is it weird that the jet lag hasn't hit me yet?