I finally have internet in my new apartment, yay!
I feel like I should celebrate this by posting some deep and fascinating update, but I'm afraid all that's been going on this past week is a lot of boring domesticity as I try to nest in my new place. My credit cards are weeping over all the spending I've been doing, but at least the apartment is furnished now. Or at least it will be, once the dresser and sofa and TV stand get delivered over the weekend. Plus of course, there's all the stuff I had shipped from San Diego, which won't arrive until sometime after the new year.
Some thoughts and discoveries from the past couple of weeks:
1. Australian apartments (or at least Sydney apartments, can't say for the rest of the country) don't come with refrigerators. You gotta bring your own when you move in. Wow, that was an expense I
completely and totally failed to plan for! See above re: weeping credit cards.
2. This business of $1 and $2 being coins is annoying me. My wallet weighs a ton, and I can never keep track of how much cash I have on me, because it's all jumpled in the coin compartment. I suppose coins last a lot longer than bills so it makes sense to use them for the most common denominations. But it's not what I'm used to, therefore I don't like it. Pffft.
3. Jogging along the coastal walk, with the ocean just below me, is more awesome than jogging anywhere else. Though it does make it hard to muster up the proper terror for my Zombies, Run! missions. Hard to be terrified when everything is so pretty.
4. I now have a new appreciation for Marvel Digital Comics. Specifically, I'm appreciating the fact that they cost the same in Australia as in the US.
5. I'm sooooo done with cheap furniture I have to assemble myself. So far, I've put together a bed, a dining table and four chairs, and the chairs were totally the worst. Seriously, when a totally plain dining chair is harder to assemble than a queen-size bed, there's a design flaw somewhere. Sigh. At least the sofa and the dresser I've got coming are
real furniture and will arrive in actual furniture shape. I'll still have to assemble the TV stand, but it's small.
6. Christmas buses! Is that a thing? I was waiting for the 374 in Randwick last week, and when it came,
it looked like this. I thought it was just one driver feeling extra festive, but I saw another bus in Coogee later done up the same way. So I guess it's at least two drivers feeling extra festive.
Sooo, yep, definitely loving Sydney so far. Not a lot of news on the work front yet -- I've basically been reading a lot papers about ocean biogeochemisty and fiddling with some Matlab code. But it looks like I'll be going to Tasmania for a few days in January, to meet with some guys at CSIRO. Anyone got tips on what to see in Hobart?
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