Home and Away*

First off, apologies for the crazy, random font changes in the previous post. I wrote the whole thing in Blogger and didn't fiddle with anything, so there's no excuse this time. i guess BLOGGER JUST THINKS it's COOL to do whatever IT WANTS withOUT my CONSENT. Got it.

We have now been on Australian soil for a week now and man does time fly. Mainly it flies because of exhaustion and jet lag and running around town like a chicken with your head cut off.

It's weird how jet lag affects people differently. For Martin it means he sleeps pretty much constantly, like an infant. I look over at him and he's randomly fallen asleep again, sitting in his high chair with his bib still on. For me, 4 hours a night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. is more than sufficient. Which is so uncharacteristic, I have been known to nap three times in one day! Crossing the equator must alter your DNA, Jurassic Park-style. Bottom line is: jet lag is a biotch.

On Day 1 we immediately began our apartment hunt, which is the aforementioned running around like chickens with our head cut off. We picked the worst time of year to arrive, as the school year is just beginning and students are descending upon the city in search of the same type of accommodation as us (awesome location, reasonably priced, fully furnished). You have to view an apartment first, apply for it and show a ton of ID/documentation, then be accepted by the property management company before you can declare a place officially yours. So it's a good thing we have one thing that most students don't:

Cash money. Gobs and gobs of it. Obscene amounts, really.

Well, not really. But we kicked up our budget a little bit and it seemed like all the competition just melted away. It actually all came out in the wash because most buildings have a gym and a pool (A POOL, in your face northern dwelling suckers!) so we could shift some of our gym membership budget to rent. Believe it or not, despite our rotund appearances we do enjoy having access to a gym.

We spent Wednesday & Thursday frantically searching apartment ads, making appointments for viewings, attending viewings and submitting applications. So busy. I had a notebook chock full of addresses, phone numbers and appointment times that looked like Carrie's wall of batshit insanity on Homeland. It made sense to no one but me. But it paid off! We found a place!

On Thursday at 2 p.m. we viewed/applied for this place and at 11 a.m. Friday we got the call that we'd been approved! They were the first one to get back to us (out of 4 applications already submitted, and a few more waiting to be submitted). This place can only be described as "the pimpest place ever" so we decided to go for it! Cue the hugest sigh of relief I have breathed since Frankfurt.

We really had no choice but to take the first place offered to us. What if all the others rejected us? We are only on one income right now, so that might make us unattractive candidates (despite the fact that a fabulously paid job is no doubt just around the corner for me). Martin's company is putting us up in a "serviced apartment" for the first 2 weeks but after that our free ride is over. Once we move in to our own place sadly there will be nobody to change our towels and make our bed and do our dishes for us. I'm not entirely sure if we're supposed to do that last one ourselves, and I feel like a Grade A bourgeois asshole letting somebody else do them for me, but make no mistake I continue to let the maid do them.

I would like to bragmention one last thing: Not once have I lifted up the toilet seat to check for spiders before sitting down. Not once! But I do think about it each and every time I go and then I rush rush rush to get off of it because OMG what if there is a spider under there and it wants to touch me? That is a delicate area. I think I might start checking from now on so I can properly empty my bladder.

*bonus points to anybody who caught the clever Australia related title of this post.