My move in

Below you will find the ramblings of an apartment hunting addict.

I moved into the new death star last night, and my second-first impression was less than stellar. Where to begin? I started searching for a place last monday, the quest luring me all around Melbourne with but a map and a list of phone numbers/room prices. While a few places seemed OK (these places were then rented out just prior to me requesting a "let" in them - one with a couple of Aussie guys, another w/ 3 Aussies who chose to balance w/ 2 girls/2 guys - there were already 2 dudes and a fat girl, I wouldn't want to room with them anyway lest I be gobbled up in my sleep by the cheese-cakery, and one place with 2 girls who told me to come check out the room on friday, yet "sold" it on thursday [clearly they had no idea what they were passing up]--> the lesson, as always: Girls are not to be trusted - they are bastions of dishonesty and shrewd but poorly formulated business practices), the rest of the places were, to be kind, ramshackle relics of horrendous proportions, sort of like those of the ancient Minoans of Crete, but only if you took away all the mosaic art, moved into them now, as ruins, and used a team of mutant beavers to gnaw out the prehistoric indoor plumbing. It is a sellers' market.

So as is my wont, I began to panic, and became semi-desparate to snatch up a semi-decent place. I got the "place" part down ok. I already introduced you to my splendid land lady (whom no one in the house can stand, wart nosed heathen that she is), now let me lead you down the hallway to the kitchen. A transluscent film of ill repute coats all, with three small refrigerators running idly, incubating the contents sporadically (i.e. growing spores, not whimsically random). My room is quite small, but that's ok, who needs space when you have science. Oh, this is fun: my biological compass (which many of you know to function about as well as Captain Jack Sparrow's, but without the magic) told me to blurt out, "at least my window doesn't face the east," upon discussing my room's shortcomings with one housemate, Skye. Alas, fellow wanderers. The sun still rises in the east down here, right through my shade and into my bloodshot eyes.

I wouldn't be telling all of this if it didn't have a gold lining (or bronze, or a semi precious stone, or even one of those "tiger's eye" stones): The location is sweet. I'm about 2 blocks in every direction from all sorts of cool stuff. I can walk to work, walk to bars, walk to all sorts of cafes (which, as I've stated, are sweet). Plus, my lease goes til Feb, at which point I can renew, and cut my balls off, or try to find a decent place brimming with glitz.

If you look hard in the upper right hand corner of my room picture, you can just start to make out the floral print bedsheets. My host, Penny, sent me on my merry way with twin sized sheets to call my own, from her roses and pink cosmopolitan collection. This is perfect, however, because Christina wanted me to give off an air of homosexuality, so as to ward off potential evil minded women lurking around corners to steal away with my fidelity. Mission accomplished.

Speaking of the interactions of women and men, there is way too much goddamn PDA in this country. On the train, on the tram, in the streets, IN THE GYM! Touching, cuddling, hugging, nuzzling, tripping over accents like they had golf balls in their mouths -- I seriously want to vomit. I don't know if it's more accepted, but it's not cool.

And with that, I bid you all adieu, and will discuss my new job that I started yesterday. Yesterday to me, not yesterday to you -- life is sure good on this side of the international date line, coming to you live from the future.