Here's what we've been up to lately:
Patrick
Monday, October 4, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Suburb jumping
So I haven't updated this in a while. Many things have happened around here, not all of which I'll write about. Patrick's school has picked up some and he had his first midterm yesterday. Work has remained about the same (though I never realized that not having long nails would be a limitation as it was yesterday when I spent hours trying to peel the labels off of edible metallic color powders).
I'm ten pages away from finishing my first script in two years and about eight pages away from finishing my second. If only I could survive working for two days a week -- man I would finish my novel in no time. :)
Patrick and I have finally started venturing outside of the city limits to get a taste of what the suburbs have to offer. Three weeks ago, we took a train to Upper Ferntree Gully and climbed the 1000 Step Memorial Trail, built to let people "experience a sense of the exhaustion felt by the Australian soldiers following the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea in World War II." Yes, there are a thousand stairs and yes, it was a beautiful climb...and exhausting.
Spot the Jordan!
I climbed this trail when I lived here last time with my friends Zoe and Dean. After Patrick and I finished, we took the train to the end of the line -- a town called Belgrave -- and watched Inception again.
Two weekends ago, we went to Werribee South. Unfortunately, the city uses the weekends to repair train tracks so we only had about an hour to walk around before the final bus back to the city so we walked around, collected shells, enjoyed the calm water and waited for the sun to set. I've only ever seen water this calm on a lake :) We think we'll go again, though, because there's a zoo and winery there. Should be fun, if we can get there early enough.
Patrick's "Spring Break" begins next Friday and we both have off for 16 days. So we're taking two trains up the east coast. We'll hit Sydney, Byron Bay, Brisbane, Townsville (and Magnetic Island), and eventually Cairns and Port Douglas where we'll go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, take a Crocodile Tour on the Daintree River and eat homemade ice cream in the Daintree Rainforest. at least, I hope we can get to all of that. It'll be fast-paced to be sure, but fun. We're going to sleep on the train and only carry backpacks. Should be fun :D
Otherwise, I've kept myself busy by making weird hand paintings...
and pretending that a Purple People Eater slapped me...
Will write again,
Jordan and Patrick
I'm ten pages away from finishing my first script in two years and about eight pages away from finishing my second. If only I could survive working for two days a week -- man I would finish my novel in no time. :)
Patrick and I have finally started venturing outside of the city limits to get a taste of what the suburbs have to offer. Three weeks ago, we took a train to Upper Ferntree Gully and climbed the 1000 Step Memorial Trail, built to let people "experience a sense of the exhaustion felt by the Australian soldiers following the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea in World War II." Yes, there are a thousand stairs and yes, it was a beautiful climb...and exhausting.
Spot the Jordan!
I climbed this trail when I lived here last time with my friends Zoe and Dean. After Patrick and I finished, we took the train to the end of the line -- a town called Belgrave -- and watched Inception again.
Two weekends ago, we went to Werribee South. Unfortunately, the city uses the weekends to repair train tracks so we only had about an hour to walk around before the final bus back to the city so we walked around, collected shells, enjoyed the calm water and waited for the sun to set. I've only ever seen water this calm on a lake :) We think we'll go again, though, because there's a zoo and winery there. Should be fun, if we can get there early enough.
Patrick's "Spring Break" begins next Friday and we both have off for 16 days. So we're taking two trains up the east coast. We'll hit Sydney, Byron Bay, Brisbane, Townsville (and Magnetic Island), and eventually Cairns and Port Douglas where we'll go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, take a Crocodile Tour on the Daintree River and eat homemade ice cream in the Daintree Rainforest. at least, I hope we can get to all of that. It'll be fast-paced to be sure, but fun. We're going to sleep on the train and only carry backpacks. Should be fun :D
Otherwise, I've kept myself busy by making weird hand paintings...
and pretending that a Purple People Eater slapped me...
Will write again,
Jordan and Patrick
Friday, August 20, 2010
Working Down Under
Ahh, work. What a strange creature you are, so polite and unassuming and vanilla. And yet, you provide me with enough money to pay the electric bill (with a $50 "account activation fee") and eat Indian food when I want. Still, you make me peel off price tags labels until my thumbs are bleeding because I refuse to grow long nails, which freak me out because they cripple you more the longer they are, and you make me remove a thousand packing peanuts from a box only to put them back in. And you make me smell the sweet sweet scent of French pastries all day but never give me any.
Plus you terrify me because it has somehow become the norm -- nay, the societal pressure -- for people to stay in a job they can't stand and "climb a ladder" to nowhere all while neglecting the fact that often times, they're helping someone else to realize their often far more lucrative and fulfilling dream.
I'm not trying to say I hate work, no. I like it. It gives me something to do and I can pay rent. But I'm almost 99 percent sure now that I will end up working for myself...or at least die struggling to do something that actually feels fulfilling to me.
Tonight, Patrick and I walked around a grassland park at sunset after it had rained for a while. It was beautiful and dewy. The clouds were a champagne mango color and the grass was so green that my eyes had to adjust to it. I even played with two pitbulls named Marmaduke and Leroy. And the birds here are preparing to mate and have taken to squawking up a storm every time someone steps a foot near the park's long grass.
We're all right in the Down Under country. It's almost spring.
Plus you terrify me because it has somehow become the norm -- nay, the societal pressure -- for people to stay in a job they can't stand and "climb a ladder" to nowhere all while neglecting the fact that often times, they're helping someone else to realize their often far more lucrative and fulfilling dream.
I'm not trying to say I hate work, no. I like it. It gives me something to do and I can pay rent. But I'm almost 99 percent sure now that I will end up working for myself...or at least die struggling to do something that actually feels fulfilling to me.
Tonight, Patrick and I walked around a grassland park at sunset after it had rained for a while. It was beautiful and dewy. The clouds were a champagne mango color and the grass was so green that my eyes had to adjust to it. I even played with two pitbulls named Marmaduke and Leroy. And the birds here are preparing to mate and have taken to squawking up a storm every time someone steps a foot near the park's long grass.
We're all right in the Down Under country. It's almost spring.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Life with a job
Two days ago I got my first post-college job -- Woohoo! I'm now the casual administrative goober for a Chocolate and Patisserie School, which means I'm surrounded by the smell of chocolate all day, get free DELICIOUS lunch and get to play around with that journalism degree I earned. Basically, I write up flyers, labels, event invitations, press releases, etc to the tune of about $100 a half-day and I don't even have to wear business clothes! Sounds great to me.
It was definitely a challenge even getting that job with a 4-month visa, since most places here are looking for long-term employees and few are willing to train you for your particular line of work. But if you get here and get a bartending license right away, you're good to go as far as I can tell. In any case, I got a job so now I'm good to go on the whole "I'm living here" thing.
In my off time, I hang out with Patrick, walk around the beautiful park areas of our great city and write my novel, of which I now have 121 pages, and screenplay, of which I have 40 pages.
We've been here a month already, I can't believe it. Patrick has settled into his classes and is working on an OCRemix.com score, which means the apartment is always filled with music. And we've recently discovered that he will get 2 weeks off at the end of September for Spring Break, which means we will have to find an exciting trip to take -- either to the tropical northeastern coast, the hot red desert center or even to New Zealand. Maybe I can take him volcano luging, volcano hiking and to see the hot springs there, all of which I've visited before and which are GORGEOUS. It's pretty impressive for such a small country. Also, I never had a chance to see the Lord of the Rings Hobbiton when I visited last time so we might have to go.
In the mean time, we're planning little minitrips out of the city -- to Sydney and Ballarat (a gold-mining town near Melbourne) at least.
Will write again soon!
It was definitely a challenge even getting that job with a 4-month visa, since most places here are looking for long-term employees and few are willing to train you for your particular line of work. But if you get here and get a bartending license right away, you're good to go as far as I can tell. In any case, I got a job so now I'm good to go on the whole "I'm living here" thing.
In my off time, I hang out with Patrick, walk around the beautiful park areas of our great city and write my novel, of which I now have 121 pages, and screenplay, of which I have 40 pages.
We've been here a month already, I can't believe it. Patrick has settled into his classes and is working on an OCRemix.com score, which means the apartment is always filled with music. And we've recently discovered that he will get 2 weeks off at the end of September for Spring Break, which means we will have to find an exciting trip to take -- either to the tropical northeastern coast, the hot red desert center or even to New Zealand. Maybe I can take him volcano luging, volcano hiking and to see the hot springs there, all of which I've visited before and which are GORGEOUS. It's pretty impressive for such a small country. Also, I never had a chance to see the Lord of the Rings Hobbiton when I visited last time so we might have to go.
In the mean time, we're planning little minitrips out of the city -- to Sydney and Ballarat (a gold-mining town near Melbourne) at least.
Will write again soon!
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Two Weeks in Melbourne
Returning to Melbourne has been a dream of mine since I touched down here in February of 2008. To me, walking around this city was like throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain in Rome -- I knew from the moment I saw the shot tower in the Melbourne Central Mall, spent my first Sunday perched on a rock by the sea in St. Kilda and climbed the 1000 step trail in the Dandenong Mountain Range that I would come back.
Patrick and I have settled into a bit of a routine now that we've been here two weeks, though it's hard to imagine that we've only had this apartment for 12 days. We've made the white noise of the city our dreaming buddy (though I would really like to disconnect the wires on the street cleaner that moves along the street here at 3:30 in the morning -- what stoner actually wanted that job?).
Today was Patrick's third day of classes and from what either of us can tell he'll do fine this semester. And while I apply for as many jobs as I can and wait impatiently by the phone I have been writing the first few chapters of a novel (woohoo page 34 today!), the idea for which I've had rolling around in my head for over a year.
We've discovered some very tasty cheap places to eat but are surviving off delicious veggie stir fries that we cook at home. I'm still amazed at how cheap the produce is here. The Queen Victoria Markets are a foodie's open-air dream and yesterday we ran out of our veggies. I walked over and up two blocks to the Market yesterday and bought 8 red and yellow bell peppers, half a kilo of green beans, a kilo of carrots, 10 kiwi, 10 mandarin oranges, two tangelos and a bunch of ripe bananas for $12 Australian, which is $10.74 USD. That's cheap! And it still confuses me when I walk into Woolsworth or Cole's (the chain supermarkets) and see people paying so much when the market is only two blocks away. This morning I made myself a delicious fruit salad for breakfast of kiwi, banana and mandarin orange. Yum! All that was missing was the soy yogurt. And I love feeling like I actually live here because we can cook for ourselves.
The temperature is slowly rising and today we broken the 60*F mark -- woohoo! I know Patty will love it here even more once he starts to see the place come alive in the heat. Some parts of the city are already starting to show the first signs of spring. We walked around the botanical gardens the other day and Patrick saw his first Sulphur-crested Cockatoo and lorikeets (parrots which are as numerous in the summer as our robins or blue jays).
We're living relatively sparsely here since we're buying internet by the megabyte and movie tickets cost $17. We're not watching as many movies or videos or downloading any music and in certain ways I think our passions are benefiting because of it. Without television or video games, we're both spending more time on what we care about the most -- Patrick is writing and organizing his thoughts like a speed demon and so am I, in a different way. And although certain things have become more expensive since I lived here last (a Student Union membership, which I used to use to rent movies, is now $100 and movie tickets used to be about $10), we're living relatively cheaply as well. Plus, we live across the street from the state library. Though we can't check out books like in the United States (it's not a lending library), it has a nice enough atmosphere that we could spend the day there reading if we wanted to.
Patty has just made Mexi-beans and rice for dinner so I'm signing out,
will post again soon,
Jordan
P.S. - Here, Mexican food is exotic (a Mexican restaurant charges $18 for a meal that would cost less than $6 in the States and is therefore off limits to the budget-minded 20-somethings in this apartment). Plus, the grocery stores do not sell black beans...at all...even in the "Hispanic" aisle. So, Patrick and I have become fond of the Mexi-bean, which is essentially pinto beans seasoned with garlic power, chili powder, onion and salt and which thickens when drained and fried in a pan. We add cumin, cayenne, and paprika - yum!
Patrick and I have settled into a bit of a routine now that we've been here two weeks, though it's hard to imagine that we've only had this apartment for 12 days. We've made the white noise of the city our dreaming buddy (though I would really like to disconnect the wires on the street cleaner that moves along the street here at 3:30 in the morning -- what stoner actually wanted that job?).
Today was Patrick's third day of classes and from what either of us can tell he'll do fine this semester. And while I apply for as many jobs as I can and wait impatiently by the phone I have been writing the first few chapters of a novel (woohoo page 34 today!), the idea for which I've had rolling around in my head for over a year.
We've discovered some very tasty cheap places to eat but are surviving off delicious veggie stir fries that we cook at home. I'm still amazed at how cheap the produce is here. The Queen Victoria Markets are a foodie's open-air dream and yesterday we ran out of our veggies. I walked over and up two blocks to the Market yesterday and bought 8 red and yellow bell peppers, half a kilo of green beans, a kilo of carrots, 10 kiwi, 10 mandarin oranges, two tangelos and a bunch of ripe bananas for $12 Australian, which is $10.74 USD. That's cheap! And it still confuses me when I walk into Woolsworth or Cole's (the chain supermarkets) and see people paying so much when the market is only two blocks away. This morning I made myself a delicious fruit salad for breakfast of kiwi, banana and mandarin orange. Yum! All that was missing was the soy yogurt. And I love feeling like I actually live here because we can cook for ourselves.
The temperature is slowly rising and today we broken the 60*F mark -- woohoo! I know Patty will love it here even more once he starts to see the place come alive in the heat. Some parts of the city are already starting to show the first signs of spring. We walked around the botanical gardens the other day and Patrick saw his first Sulphur-crested Cockatoo and lorikeets (parrots which are as numerous in the summer as our robins or blue jays).
We're living relatively sparsely here since we're buying internet by the megabyte and movie tickets cost $17. We're not watching as many movies or videos or downloading any music and in certain ways I think our passions are benefiting because of it. Without television or video games, we're both spending more time on what we care about the most -- Patrick is writing and organizing his thoughts like a speed demon and so am I, in a different way. And although certain things have become more expensive since I lived here last (a Student Union membership, which I used to use to rent movies, is now $100 and movie tickets used to be about $10), we're living relatively cheaply as well. Plus, we live across the street from the state library. Though we can't check out books like in the United States (it's not a lending library), it has a nice enough atmosphere that we could spend the day there reading if we wanted to.
Patty has just made Mexi-beans and rice for dinner so I'm signing out,
will post again soon,
Jordan
P.S. - Here, Mexican food is exotic (a Mexican restaurant charges $18 for a meal that would cost less than $6 in the States and is therefore off limits to the budget-minded 20-somethings in this apartment). Plus, the grocery stores do not sell black beans...at all...even in the "Hispanic" aisle. So, Patrick and I have become fond of the Mexi-bean, which is essentially pinto beans seasoned with garlic power, chili powder, onion and salt and which thickens when drained and fried in a pan. We add cumin, cayenne, and paprika - yum!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
First week in Melbourne
After a busy week of orientation, hostels, jet lag, apartment searching, and a weekend w/o electricity, Jordan and I are finally settled in our new apartment. Now that I have the occasion to charge my computer and upload things, I've made a video out of some of the clips and pictures I've taken over the past week. It turned out a little sappier that I anticipated, but in any event here it is:
Tonight was also our first night eating in, since we now have a working fridge to keep groceries. Jordan made some wonderful stir fry with rice, zucchini, onions, garlic, red peppers (all gotten fresh today from the open-air Victoria market), and some Thai sweet chili sauce she's been wanting me to try for months. It was fantastic. The city is an expensive place when you have nothing to cook for yourself, so my wallet as well as my stomach is appreciative.
I thought today was going to be the beginning of my normal orientation (the pre-orientation international student activities were last week), but it has turned out to be the end of it. Besides a meeting here and there on Thursday and Friday, I'm done for the week. So, I sit here typing to you with an open schedule in a new apartment in a new country. Things could be worse. It also sounds like I can get all of the classes I want, and the people helping me in this regard have been very friendly; I hope the same holds true for the administrators of said courses (or subjects, as they call them here; when Australians say course, they mean degree).
All we need now is for summer to arrive, and the Australia I grew up envisioning should spring alive. Also, it looks like Tommy Emmanuel has a few tour dates at the beginning of December over here. Maybe I can convince Jordan to indulge me.
-Patrick
p.s. Kangaroo sausage isn't very good, crocodile is ok, but emu is pretty darn good
Tonight was also our first night eating in, since we now have a working fridge to keep groceries. Jordan made some wonderful stir fry with rice, zucchini, onions, garlic, red peppers (all gotten fresh today from the open-air Victoria market), and some Thai sweet chili sauce she's been wanting me to try for months. It was fantastic. The city is an expensive place when you have nothing to cook for yourself, so my wallet as well as my stomach is appreciative.
I thought today was going to be the beginning of my normal orientation (the pre-orientation international student activities were last week), but it has turned out to be the end of it. Besides a meeting here and there on Thursday and Friday, I'm done for the week. So, I sit here typing to you with an open schedule in a new apartment in a new country. Things could be worse. It also sounds like I can get all of the classes I want, and the people helping me in this regard have been very friendly; I hope the same holds true for the administrators of said courses (or subjects, as they call them here; when Australians say course, they mean degree).
All we need now is for summer to arrive, and the Australia I grew up envisioning should spring alive. Also, it looks like Tommy Emmanuel has a few tour dates at the beginning of December over here. Maybe I can convince Jordan to indulge me.
-Patrick
p.s. Kangaroo sausage isn't very good, crocodile is ok, but emu is pretty darn good
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
A Jet-Lagged Week
Yesterday was my birthday and Patrick and I spent most of it walking (with a decadent chocolate birthday pizza thrown in - YUM!), and thanks to our jet lag we were both drop-dead exhausted by 8 p.m. last night.
I managed to stay up until about nine and slept until 4:40 when the texting service we're using to get apartment inspection notices sent me two new notices and woke me and my roommate up. Then I slept till 6:30, which means that I'm slowly adjusting to Melbourne time. Tragically, Patrick went to bed at midnight and woke up at 5:30. Poor guy.
Today, I'm getting a haircut and then we are going to view two more apartments - both in the same building in a really good place for jobs and school. Plus, a tram goes directly to the Queen Victoria markets (the giant open-air produce markets north of the city).
Anyway, wish us good luck on our apartment search (and hope that no one else shows interest in the two we're going to see today - I'm pretty tired of the hostel thing so I'm willing to accept anything so long as it's furnished).
I managed to stay up until about nine and slept until 4:40 when the texting service we're using to get apartment inspection notices sent me two new notices and woke me and my roommate up. Then I slept till 6:30, which means that I'm slowly adjusting to Melbourne time. Tragically, Patrick went to bed at midnight and woke up at 5:30. Poor guy.
Today, I'm getting a haircut and then we are going to view two more apartments - both in the same building in a really good place for jobs and school. Plus, a tram goes directly to the Queen Victoria markets (the giant open-air produce markets north of the city).
Anyway, wish us good luck on our apartment search (and hope that no one else shows interest in the two we're going to see today - I'm pretty tired of the hostel thing so I'm willing to accept anything so long as it's furnished).
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