I have now been in Australia for a whole week. It has been nearly two weeks since I finally received my visa. And now I am starting to settle down, well of sorts. Recovery from the 22 hours flying has been slow, not felt quite 100%, mind you I haven't had crippling jet lag that others have shown, although I have kept to a fairly regular sleep pattern. It seems the trick for those that survived it was to stay up as long as possible on the plan, arrive as it gets to night time in Australia and go to bed as soon as you check in. From what I can remember on the flight I saw Super 8, Bridesmaids, The Trip which were all very good, another film which I have forgotten (was clearly very good although on a quick google search of film lists for SA I think it was X Men: First Class), some big bang theory and the highlights of the 2007 Rugby world cup final which I had forgotten was really badly refereed... Ah well. Maybe this year (yes that was sarcastic). As far as planes go, the A380 flew the first leg to Singapore in was lovely, spacious, good entertainment system, great service, comfortable enough. The Boeing 777 variation I flew on the second leg however was cramped, had a poorly designed entertainment system not only were the headphone sockets dodgy but the handsets stowed in the arm rest meaning if you shifted your bum you hit random buttons, more often than note stop... The food was worse, although it being airline food it wasn't spectacular on either leg. And the service was poor compared to the first flight. I'll let that fly though (excuse the pun), I got here safely with all baggage and fairly minimal fuss. It could have been worse.
So from there I checked out at the airport avoiding bag searches etc because despite declaring shoes, seeing the boots I wore were clean he couldn't be bothered to search me (probably because they were all allegedly on strike) so I sailed straight through. From there I made it to the lobby only to realise the small print said that the free shuttle bus ran till 7pm, it was 7:20pm by the time I got there. I spoke to a nice meet a greet lady from another hostel I recognised who said it would be easiest to catch a train to Town Hall and walk as it was just round the corner. This in itself wasn't difficult, and I got my first glimpse of Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House from the downstairs of the train at Circular Quay, but was somewhat painful as the ticket was somewhat expensive at $15 or so, I later found out that this is due to an airport surcharge directed at catching out travellers, a normal ticket on a much longer commuter journey being around $5... From there I got to the hostel, and as much as I liked the party atmosphere and made some good friends there, I wouldn't recommend it (BASE 477 Kent Street for reference) due to uninterested, unhelpful staff, inefficient room allocation systems resulting in multiple people being sent to rooms without spare beds needing to change, a generally tatty building but with the one saving grace of a pretty good club next door with an impressive regular turnout (Scary Canary). In the hostel I met people like Jemma who showed me where to find Medicare and whereabouts to find the bank to set up accounts (although she couldn't see it like finding wood through the trees), as well as finding what appeared to be the Chinese language Vodafone shops much to the staffs chagrin. Also went up the Sydney tower and to the nearby Opera House via Hyde Park and the Botanical gardens with her later in the week. As far as nights out we had been for casual drinks with another guy Mark to a place called Scruffy Murphy's and the night before that ring of fire amongst other games with Fraser and Gai as well as checking out the bar/club next door. All pretty good fun.
From there I stayed with some friends of my parents train buddies in the suburb of Turramurra, which was good, got to see family life in an Australian house, it's pretty different (they don't really lock stuff up and swap cars at will). They also took me to a Scottish pub in central to meet a relative of theirs and his friends over to celebrate his 29th for the purpose of watching the England vs Scotland match, with them mostly Sottish. It was an interesting experience, and a really close match. From there Robin took us all out to an Italian place which was lovely, and then his sons Jamie and Stewart (or Stuart, I never did ask) took me round some bars in Sydney, spending the majority of the night in the Oxford Art House Club in Kings Cross followed by a night rider bus home at 4am... All pretty good, also almost set fire to their house accidentally the following day as the toaster didn't pop up, burnt the toast to charcoal and filled the house with smoke, although I got the impression this is not an unusual occurrence. Ah well.
My frantic house hunting the previous week wasn't really successful finding me only one house in Ultimo (444 Wattle Street, Ultimo) which is for want of a better word, a bit of a hole. At first sight it seems like a nice enough compact terrace and seemed ok when I went to view it, but since I've moved in I've discovered the fridge is filthy, it's quite noisy from the road front and back, the hob and probably most of the kitchen has cockroaches, the oven is broken, the window in my room doesn't open and the blinds for the same don't shut. Also the Koreans that live downstairs who appear to be head tenants don't seem interested in socialising at all, and unless she stores water in Absolut bottles to keep it cold in the fridge (which is feasible) the lady swigs vodka throughout the day during the weekends. So I want to move, annoyingly the contract is in poor English and it looks like I might have to pay two weeks rent of $440 when I move out this weekend as I misunderstood, but I can't really cope with being here much longer and the only other place to have responded was so good that I couldn't see the other visitors that week not taking it. So I move into that house (16-18 Myrtle Street, Chippendale) at the weekend, and shall be much happier. The room is a spacious double only just refurbished, as is much of the rest of the house. It's in a kind of private student halls with a landlord that is picky about his tenants, but the ones I have met that I will share the kitchen with seem friendly and interested as they are doing much the same as me in a couple of cases. But yeah, for that joy I might just have to bite the bullet on this house as far as rent goes (thanks to the Aussie anal adoption of 14 days notice for everything, even environmental health complaints, rendering such useful as I could just move out in that time anyway). You never know, Lee, the guy who sorted the viewing etc seems sympathetic and it might still happen yet.
So this is fast becoming an essay and I still haven't complained about the cold weather yet (was 16 degrees the last couple of days, rained a couple of days last week with only one really warm day) but I am reliably informed the UK Indian summer has finished and the Australian real summer will start soon so any bragging rights will quickly go. In terms of my project, I finally took my project on proper this morning having finished all the various paperwork to start at the department and my nominal thesis title is The catalytic activity of Pentaphenylcyclopentadienyliron derivatives with respect to the Cyclopentadienyliron derivative equivalents, with possible scope for Pentamethylcyclopentadiene work as well as specific further investigations with aryl group modifications if there is any major improvement in the catalysis reactions to be investigated. A wide scope "just in case it doesn't work" to quote my supervisor, Tony Masters, who is quite the gent. I have an office shared at the moment with 6 (possibly 7, some are more elusive than others) people and have generally met and befriended most of the group. They're all friendly although regardless I'm already dreading giving a presentation in November... They have morning coffee every morning like clockwork (although it was a little late today because Faulk the regular organiser is on holiday), randomly come in to play a card game called 500 (a version of whist with some odd but entertaining rules), go out for group lunch every Friday and group + extras drinks on a Friday evening. A social group, could be hard to get serious graft done, but I'd rather this way round than a group of really boring people.
So yeah, I've settled down in Australia with the more obvious observations of it's really expensive, 3/4 pint measures being frankly ridiculous, goon being as foul as everyone says it will be amongst other things not really needing saying, I have more or less settled in and am enjoying it. Photos for those that have my social accounts are being uploaded first onto G+ and maybe FB when I get bored enough to do that all again, just ask if you think you have good reason to see them.
Till the next post, ciao
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