Day 18 - October 10

I called back the company that was interested in my resume. The problem was that the position was for long term. Oh well, back to looking for another job.
I decided to apply at Pinnacle, where Zeena has a job at. It's a hospitality agency. They basically keep you on call and contact you when they need servers, greeters, ticket rippers, etc. for events and banquets. When I went in to apply, they asked if I had my RSA certificate (responsible service of alcohol). I said no and they told me that I had to get that first in order to apply to Pinnacle. They gave me a note that directed me to the nearest place that provided courses for RSA. 

I went to the Victorian Bar School, which was across from Flinders Station. It was normally a $70 course, but I had the note from Pinnacle that gave me a whopping $5 discount! I signed up for the next course which was to be held at 9:00am the next day.

Back to the library again to look for other jobs. This library is pretty much my second home.

Here's another edition of Overheard and Lost In Love.

Saw this mural in the alley and it reminded me of my hockey team. Go Pandas!! Oh how I miss strapping on my skates and playing hockey.

Day 17 - October 9

I checked through my emails to see if any responses came back from applying to jobs. I got one email that said she was interested in meeting me. It was to be a ship coordinator where I would be responsible for 5 ships that transport workers to offshore rigs and I would take care of the roster for the ships and for the well being of the crew. This made me contemplate about quitting Energy Australia. The in-your-face sales just didn't fit my style. After asking for advice from my sister, which she is really good at, I decided to quit. She said that if I'm not having fun, then what's the point. Simple as that.

I called up Mel and told her that I quit. I told her that another opportunity came up. I apologized to her and told her that she was an awesome mentor and that she was a lot of fun to hang out with. She understood and told me to keep in touch.

After that phone conversation, I felt a big weight being lifted off my shoulders.

For the remainder of the day I just decided to hang out at home and rest. Oscar the tailess cat was also resting.

His eyes are kind of cross eyed, I was disturbing his slumber

I wonder what he was dreaming about. Looks like he was working out or something.

Day 16 - October 8

Today is Jenn's thanksgiving dinner! I said I would be making a dish like Forest and Jennaay - peas and care-rots. It was a pot luck and Jenn was making the chicken as the main dish as it is very difficult to find turkey Melbourne. I got there at 5:00pm as dinner started at 7:00pm. I met a house mate of theirs, Joe, from New Zealand and a friend of Jenn, Amanda from Niagra Falls. Everyone else arrived about 30 minutes later. Another girl, Hailee, was from Saskatoon and a random guy that Jenn met on the tram the other day, Robbie, was from P.E.I. That pretty much sums Jenn up there, very friendly and inviting. You can't get any kinder than her. One girl, Shelley was from New Zealand and the other 3 girls, Regan, Natalie, and Emma, were from Australia.

There was a lot of food; Chicken and stuffing, mashed potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, marshmellow salad, yams,gravy, salad, peas and carrots, cabbage rolls, buns, pumpkin pie and pecan pie.

Homemade pecan pie

Homemade pumpkin pie

We planned to eat at 7:00pm, but we actually didn't start eating till 8:15pm as a lot of people had to warm up their food before serving. There were only enough chairs for the girls to sit at the table, so the guys just stood by the tables to eat.

 Back Row: Me, Jenn, Paul, Amanda, Robbie, Joseph Front Row: Natalie, Shelley, Emma, Hailee, Regan

Hoping this Koala didn't have syphilis

Most of the night, the girls talked about massages with happy endings and blue waffles (I wouldn't google that if I were you) and such. I think Regan said something about guys who work as massage therapists and give happy endings to women if they wanted. Where do I sign up? Then they started talking about how Koala's can get syphilis. I held a Koala bear before, and I used the same toilet seat as him, does that mean I have it too?

While the girls talked more about their sexual stories, the guys talked about how we should listen more closely to their sexual stories. Then we talked about movies, tv shows, and how inner bush towns of Australia are really dangerous for foreigners. Apparently they are racist. Recently at a bar at a small town, two Irish men were beat up and left to die in the bar bathroom and how they both crawled out of the pub to call for help, while everyone else was just partying as though nothing had happened.

The party lasted until about 12:30am. This was perfect as the last train that goes back to Northcote (pronounced 'north-curt', not 'north-coat' or 'north-co-tay') was in 30 mins. I took the tram with Robbie, as the tram took him straight home in North Melbourne, and the tram took me to Flinders station to take the last train home.

Tram

Train

Flinders Street Train Station

Day 15 - October 7

First day on the job. Got to work at 8:20am for the daily team meeting in the morning. It was a high energy meeting conducted by Gwyn. It was a way to pump everyone up so that they were ready to start work energized. He also mentioned that we were all going to meet at a pub after work to celebrate a co-workers last day.

Melanie drove again today. We got in her dinky car again to head to a new suburb, forgot what the area was called, but we were in the car longer than last time. We walked the streets and we alternated between each other on pitching to business.

We hit up this instrument store. She was the first to talk for this store. While talking, the store manager just didn't want any of it. He knew I was training and was saying stuff like he felt sorry for me for being a salesperson and stuff like that and that I was like a prisoner or something. Mel had enough of him slamming us, since we knew he didn't want anything we were selling, she was like 'okay Alex, time to go, and time for me to lug your ball and chains out of this store' while laughing. Out of the store I asked if he bugged her, and she replied yes, even though she knows to not let things like this get to you. Australians have the best comebacks. She was very good at that.

I had the next couple of ones, but either the manager wasn't there, the store wasn't open, a corporate head office deals with the electricity or they just weren't interested were the answers the people gave me. Some of them just told me to come back on Monday instead. Those were called the 'appointments'. But the company expects you to sell it that day and on the spot. It's pretty hardcore. The process of signing someone up takes an average 30 mins; the explaining, the signing of papers, then the call in to switch it over. The closest I got was actually getting the stores electricity bill at a charity store. The old lady that owned it didn't want any part of me though, but I was trained to be persistent, so I was (which I'm usually not) and she eventually gave me her bill. I calculated it for her and she would've saved $60 per quarterly period. She said it wasn't worth it to change to save that much. Didn't make sense to me as she's a charity group, why wouldn't she want to save any money at all? Then she had some customers at the counter and me not wanting to be rude, I left her to deal with them. That was the closest I got to a sale. :(

After following Mel to her closing deals, we decided we were done for the day. I felt verbally raped and just mentally and physically exhausted. I was hoping to get at least one today, but to no avail. We drove to the train station that was closest to Mel's house so that she could drink at the pub tonight. At the train station we picked up a free MX newspaper. It was kinda like The Gauntlet from University of Calgary, or the Calgary Metro. About 30 pages of daily news. Mel pointed out that the best part of the newspaper is the 'overheard' and 'lost in love' sections. The overheard section is people texting in conversations that they eavesdropped on that is either funny, weird, or dumb. The lost in love section is people texting in love questions or love advice. These actually are pretty funny sometimes.

On the train we talked about how she has a lot of debt through parking tickets (hitting an Alfa Romero of all cars), and her University student loans. She was paying her student loans minimally, pretty much paying the interest off every month, which basically gets you nowhere. I told her that she should either start paying lump sums, or at least get a bank loan with a lower interest rate than the student loan rates. Then she also mentioned that she just bought her 22 year old boyfriend, Will, a $400 birthday present of clothes. I don't think she's understanding how bad debt can be.

We got off at the Flagstaff station, which is the closest station to our work, and headed back to the office. There we met up with Gwyn and the other sales people, which happened to be all girls. We all headed off to the nearby pub, but it was raining and I didn't have an umbrella. One of the girls, who was cute, said to take her umbrella and to hold it for us both. She was lighting up a smoke, crappy. That's pretty much a deal breaker for me. Mel walked with Sara and I could here them talking about us, the kind of talk that high school girls would talk about if they see a boy and girl walk together.

We got to the pub, which was at the bottom level of a hostel. They served pots of drinks. Pot size is 285mL. It was the perfect size for me for beer. I don't really like beer in the first place, but I wanted to celebrate my first day of work. I also asked if the pub served food but they didn't, though the bartender said that I could bring in outside food. One of the girls from our group tagged along with me to the diner down the street. This girl was good looking, but she talked a lot. She was blonde and totally had the stereotype of a blonde. She said she gets lost a lot with direction, even with a map and an iPhone. Then she would laugh at herself. She also said 'just kidding' after a lot of her sentences. She ordered fries while I asked what the diner could make the fastest so that we could get back to the group before I blew my brains out. I ordered a burger with pineapple which took 10 mins, not fast enough!!

We got our order and went back to the pub, whilst the whole time she didn't stop talking. The burger was very tasty. I think I'll add a pineapple ring to all my burgers when I make them back home in Calgary. After about another 30 minutes, more co-workers showed up. About 3 more girls and 3 more guys. Mel introduced me to her boyfriend Will, who also worked with the same company, but in the charity division. We played pool against each other. The first round we played by Australian rules. It means that if you sink the white ball or make any 'foul' the opponent gets to go twice in a row, as opposed to the Canadian rule which is pretty much the person making the foul loses their turn. I won the first game, then Will won the second game with the Canadian rules. For the third game we played Australian rules and I won that again. Will was a nice guy too. Mel and him seemed to fit well together.

It was around 8:00pm and Jenn (my Ultimate Frisbee friend whom was also in Melbourne on a working holiday visa) texted me to go out for drinks. I decided that I wanted to meet up with her since I haven't seen a familiar face in a long time. Mel was also leaving so we decided to walk together back to the train station. When we got there, none of the trains went to Flinders station, where Jenn was, so I walked about 3 blocks and took a tram.

I saw Jenn and we gave each other a huge hug. It was awesome to see a familiar face and I think she felt the same. It was a tough week for me so seeing Jenn totally made my week. Even though we weren't best friends or anything, it felt like we were. She introduced me to her Irish boyfriend, Paul, and Paul's Irish friend, Mickey, and her Australian friend, Natalie. Mickey quickly went to buy me a pint of beer, even though I told him I didn't want one, he was not going to take no for an answer.

We spent about an hour at that pub and Jenn decided that we should check out another pub down the street. We walked up a couple of streets and headed up some stairs and into a club type area. There was no dance floor, but there was a bed in the corner. Interesting... It was really packed in the place. While we stood around and drank some more, Mickey went up beside a girl and introduced himself, then me to her. I asked where she was from, she answered Toronto and I told her I was from Calgary, then she was like 'Oh we're nowhere near each other, we shouldn't talk'. I said 'okay'. She wasn't attractive and rude anyways. Mickey started talking to another girl but the girl kept looking toward me as if I were to decipher the words for her, but I told her I didn't even understand what he was talking about. I said that he's Irish and the more they drink, the heavier their accent was and harder to understand. She just laughed.

Our group started heading out as that was not a fun place since it was way too packed and we couldn't hear each other talk. We walked to another pub up the street but it was close to closing up, it was 1:00am. I didn't think bars and pubs would close so early downtown.

I looked at the online bus schedule to see when my last bus would leave downtown to my house and it was in 10 minutes. I told everyone I was heading home and I ran to my stop. I got there in time, but about a quarter way home, the bus driver said that it was the end of the line. Apparently the last 2 buses of the day are cut short so that they don't have to double back to the bus depot. He told me to get off at the nearest stop and take a tram. I took the tram that stopped in East Brunswick. The tram driver said that he could get me back to Flinders station before my last train would leave there. Then I decided to google map how far I was to my house from where I was. I was 4 km away. So I decided to walk. The other option was heading all the way back downtown, run for my train and take that back up. If I went back, it would've taken another hour to get home, but according to google maps I could walk home in 45 minutes. Walking it was. It was about 3 communities/suburbs away I think. I passed by Batman Park too, awesome. The walk seemed like it took forever, probably because I've been walking in my dress shoes all day. I finally got home and plopped to bed.

Day 14 - October 6

I trained with another girl, Alisa. She was a little slow in the discount calculating parts of the training, but understood how to do them. Training day went by really fast. I felt like he didn't really go in depth through all the stuff that he should have. We didn't do any role playing, which I think would've helped a lot. It was as though he just wanted to get through with it so that he could go do his own thing.

We were down at about 2:00pm. As I headed toward the train station, I was walking past the Victoria Market and decided to head there instead. The first thing I bought was a lamb and veggie Borek. It was delicious. I also bought 3 small packs of strawberries for $2. That was a deal.

Afterwards I headed to the Melbourne central train station and shopped at the coles supermarket inside. I decided that I was sick of noodles and hot dogs. I bought pasta, pasta sauce, chicken and 'all usage' seasoning. They don't have the regular seasoning salt that Canada has.

I saw some cheese on the shelf that said 'coon' on it. If memory serves me right, which about 99% of the time it doesn't, I think coon is a slang term for a black man. Apparently you can get a tasty coon for $6.89, who knew.

I got home and made delicious chicken pasta wigth melted cheese on top. Zeena had also gotten home the same time I did and she also made pasta for her and Nicholas. He said that he got a job interview for landscaping. His working holiday visa expired a couple of months back, so he was looking for work that would pay him under the table.

Day 13 - October 5

Observation Day! Got up at 7am to get to work at 9am. When I got there, I met 28 year old Melanie, super friendly, cute, Australian girl. Gwyn told me that she was their top sales person. We got in her little dingy car, pretty much like what Melissa Foster drove for her first car, I think it was a red Toyota Tercel, or what Scott Roberts, my ex-boss from the casino, drove, a little yellow Geo.

The pictures of these cars don't do justice to how crappy Melanie's car was. She said she doesn't usually drive to work, but that day she happened to have the car (she shared it with one other person). She also drove another sales person, Fray, since he was also heading to the same area we were going to. It was a pretty long car ride to the part of town we were going to, I think it was Carnegie.

We dropped off Fray near the stores he stopped at from the previous day. We drove another 5 minutes and parked the car. She said to watch what she does. We went in the store and pretty much she introduced herself, then told them they offered better rates for electricity, then waited to see if they were interested. The first couple of stores didn't work out in her favour. They were already satisfied with what they had. After a couple of stores later, it was my turn. I was pretty much thrown in with the wolves. She said it was her teaching tactic. I was so nervous that I started stuttering. This usually wasn't like me, but since I'm halfway around the world and didn't really know the product I was selling, it was difficult to handle the situation. Mel would jump in to help me though. Sometimes I would forget the next line to say and just turn to Mel for her to finish off what I was saying. I've never felt so uncomfortable like that in a long time.

We only did this for a couple of hours and finished at 12:00pm. She called Gwyn to tell him what she thought of me. I didn't hear the conversation, but when she was done talking, she told me that he was waiting to hear about another girl that was also on an observation day like me. There was only 1 position available, but Mel told me that she liked me and would rather me be on her team. She said that Gwyn would call me and ask me a couple of questions. She wrote down some answers to questions that he may ask: what a Jones Theory was (related to how sheep follow other sheep and that if you tell them the business next door is doing it, then they are more inclined to follow the same decision), how much our discounts were, and how much our rates were. I said thanks for the help and then I walked toward the train station and decided I wanted to head home.

On the way home I got a call from Gwyn. Sure enough, he asked the questions that Mel had prepared me for. I answered them all and told him I was still interested in the job. He told me to come in for a training session the next day at 12:00pm.

I pretty much lazed around the house until dinner. Zeena and Nicholas were going to return some movies they rented. They asked if I wanted to go and I agreed. We walked for about 30 mins to a street full of shops. It was pretty much like a downtown of a small town. Every suburb/town had a strip of shops. They returned their movie at the store and picked up another one, a movie I've never heard of. Zeena likes to watch Indie type of movies. She was more like a tree hugger type of person, only she doesn't smoke up, at least not that I know of. She was very nice, but she seemed very shy of things/apprehensive. We also passed by a movie theatre, tickets for a normal show were $15 per person, and cheap night was $12.50. I said their cheap night was the cost of our normal night.

 

Day 12 - October 4

Interview day! I walked to reception and they handed me a sheet to fill out about myself. As I was waiting there, there were 5 others seated by me (we all sat in a square). I thought I would try and make an impression so I struck up conversation asking who was backpacking like I was. The girl in front of me said she was. I asked her where she was from, she answered Canada, then I said 'uh huh' with a big grin so that she knew I was from there too, and she continued to answer with 'Alberta', and I gave the same reaction, then she answered 'Calgary'. 'Me too' I said in disbelief. We started talking about when we landed and where we were staying and how we heard about this job. Everyone in the room heard about the job from gumtree.com.au.

As we continued chatting I was finally called for my interview. The interview was pretty standard with Gwyn, he was the marketing manager basically. In interviews I feel pretty cocky as I've been through so many and I did a lot of interviewing when I worked at the casino, so I know exactly what kind of expressions and answers they are looking for. I let Gwyn know that I was super interested, but when he said that I would be selling electricity to businesses at a lower rate, inside I just wanted to leave, but this was the only interview I got so far, so I decided to stick it out and continued with the interview. After he was done, he said I was the exact person he was looking for and that I would do great at the job. He scheduled me an observation day for the following day (pretty much job shadowing) and I agreed.

After I left the building, I looked for my fellow Calgarian, Gerri, but she was nowhere to be found. As I was walking back to the train, I looked back to see her leaving the building with a guy that interviewed her. I decided to politely interrupt to ask for her email to keep in contact, she gave me her number instead. This is where I would hit the staples button and it would say 'that was easy'.

I went back to the library again to apply for more jobs. They also have a room of video games were anyone could play xbox 360, wii or ps3. Pretty sweet library. In the middle of job hunting I received a text that I had an interview with a company called Australian Farmers Direct. Weird that they texted me that, but nonetheless, I was going for another interview in a couple of hours. The text said that I can wear jeans as it was casual wear. Well that didn't work out as I dressed business casual for the previous interview and I didn't have a change of clothes with me.

I decided to have lunch before I went to the farmers interview. I ordered sushi rolls. I thought that once I ordered the rolls, they would cut them. Nope. You eat them by the roll!! Kind of a cool concept, or just plain laziness from the chef. Apparently all sushi take out is eaten as rolls. I'm told that if you dine in a restaurant, then they cut it properly.

I took the train to Richmond and walked to the Farmers Direct office wheere I met James. I told him that I had a previous interview in the day and that I didn't get a chance to go home to change, he was cool with that. He explained that I would be going door to door to try and sign people up with their company that delivers groceries to the customers front door. Second job interview and it's more door to door stuff, what the efff. Also, both jobs are commission based. Again, I gave him the answers he was looking for, but I was more uninterested in this work than the last one. For the last one, at least customers already had the product (electricity) and I would be offering a lower rate. With Farmers Direct, I would be ringing doorbells at people's houses with a new product to sell. Every house that I get to sign on, I would get $30. That wasn't every enticing to me for some reason. As we finished the interview, he told me he would call me later in the day if I got the job or not (they were trying to fill 2 vacant spots).

I got a missed call from an unknown number about 2 hours later. It could've been Direct Farmers, but I didn't care, I didn't want that job. When I arrived home, Nicholas and Zeena had just got back from visiting her grandma, whom lived about a 3 hour drive away. The three of us talked about my day with the interviews and also about their trip.

Day 11 - October 3

Back to the State Library and looked for more jobs to apply to. I would recommend the following for job searching: gumtree.com.au (it's exactly like our www.kijiji.ca), seek.com.au, hays.com.au, and pinnaclepeople.com.au and the following to look for house sharing: gumtree.com.au and flatmates.com.au. While I was job searching, GM Global called me for an interview the next day at 9:00am. It was a marketing and sales position. It was the first call back I got so I was going to go check it out for sure.

After I was done at the library, I decided to see where the GM Global was located so that I wouldn't get lost in the morning. On my way to the interview location, I heard a lot of short whistle blowing nearby. I saw a park with lights shinning brightly on a court. If you hear a lot of whistle blowing and you're near a park in Australia, it's going to be Netball.

Night time netball, but my camera sucks

Real action on the netball court

If you haven't heard of netball, I would describe it as Basketball with no dribbling and you have to stay in specific areas on the court depending on what position you're playing. It's a big sport in Australia. Their country team is the Diamonds (they wear the yellow and green, look at above picture). They've won 10 of the past 13 Championships of all time. Championships are held every 4 years, with the most recent being this year.

Once I found the GM Global building, I went home. After taking the train back to Northcote, I walked past some interesting street names:
  

This is where Scott Roberts (my old, old boss) would live.

Imagine getting presents all the time on this street!!

"Let's do this, LEEEEEROYYYYY JENKINS"
You'll have to Youtube Leroy Jenkins, it's super geek.

Once I got home (which looks creepy at night), the house was freezing. I went to turn on the gas fireplace and the house cat, Oscar, was cold too, so he curled up by the heat.

This is a walkway to the front door. That window is part of my room. Creepy....

Oscar the cat, the tailess cat. His tail was run over by a car and had to be amputated. He has no man hood meow.

Day 10 - October 2

Got up to make some eggs and hot dogs for breakfast. Raul had already left the house to go study. I had a boring day, more job searching and applying.

It wasn't until the evening that I needed a break and decided to walk the streets and explore. I turned toward the right and walked down the street until I got onto a busy road with shops all around. It was about a block of shops on both sides of the street. I decided to see who was hiring by seeing if they posted anything on the shop windows. There were typical shops like a pharmacy (which they call 'chemist'), video rental, grocery (but more expensive than supermarkets) and some restaurants, including Indian and Japanese. After walking this block, I decided to take the giant loop back home so that I could explore even more of the neighbourhood.

I saw a possum on the side walk as well, but it wasn't scared of me, it sat there looking at me even as I got closer to it. It wasn't till I started walking away that it started limping. Poor guy was injured on one of his front paws. I didn't pass by any vet clinics, nor would they be open at this time. I left it alone as it was already scared and there was no vet clinic nearby.

 


I was getting thirsty so I walked into a 7-11 and low and behold, they have my favorite pop, Vanilla Coke!! Yummy!! Walked back to the house and it was already even later than I thought.

Day 9 - October 1

Today is the day my sister leaves me :( We got up early to pack all of our stuff since I was no longer staying at the Discovery Hotel. It was a $13 van ride to the airport for the each of us. The Airport has a monopoly on the public transportation to and from the airport. There are no trains that go there. Government bastards. My sister checked in at United for her flight to Sydney, then from Sydney to LA, then LA back to Calgary. It was time for her to head to the gate, oh great, I knew the tears would start flowing, and they did. After we said our goodbyes, I went back to the city and back to the State Library.

This library makes me feel like I was back in University again since I always studied at the MacKimmie Library back home. Applied for more jobs. I was there for about 6 hours.






Afterwards I went back to the hostel to pick up my giant backpack and head off to my new home. On my way back to the hostel, I stopped by Pappa Roti where they serve this awesome bun that my sister loves, so I bought one in hounor of her since she's the best sister in the world.

After a 30 minute bus ride to my new place, I met my house mate, Raul. He's a 33 year old Spaniard in the middle of finishing his masters. He's travelled quite a bit and is learning the different cultures of different places and bringing that knowledge back to his home country. Sounds like a spy to me, but a very cool, down to earth spy. Nicholas had called me that day to let me know that he and Zeena would not be back for another 2 nights. After Raul and I introduced ourselves for about 10 minutes, I asked him to point me in the direction to the nearest shopping center, I had to buy groceries. Knowing that I wouldn't be driving a car, I brought my backpack to carry my groceries back in.

I walk past a YMCA and went in to scope it out. It costs a one-time initial fee of $99 to join then the regular price of a membership is $31.20 fortnightly (which means bi-weekly) [The fortnight is a unit of time equivalent to fourteen days. The word derives from the Old English feorwertyne niht, meaning "fourteen nights"]. Too expensive for a backpacker and for a lazy ass like me.

I headed to a grocery store and proceeded to buy food similar to student life/bum: instant noodles, soup, hot dog weiners, eggs, bread, jam, juice, crackers. That's all I bought as since I didn't have a car, I knew I couldn't carry that much back. I walked past a cemetery on the way back, pretty creepy as it was (wait for it)....dead quite.... haha. Got back home and made my first meal since I landed in Melbourne, noodles with sliced hot dog meat for dinner. After dinner, watched some tv, then went to bed.

Day 8 - September 30

We woke up early to have a bite of the free breakfast downstairs.

Oh and this is what our room looks like. A shoe box.

And this is what I got to sleep beside, not what I envisioned as a bed buddy. (Can't sleep, clowns will eat me).
We got downstairs at 9:44am and they ended at 9:30am. Oh well, we used the free gourmet breakfast. It was actually a lot better than we thought. It was two toasts with an egg (bright orange yolk) and ham on each with one hash brown. After we finished that, we walked toward where our tram would take us to see one of the rooms for rent, by a guy named Brad, in Collingwood. On the way to the tram stop, we stopped in an Optus store to purchase a long distance SIM card. It was $30 and lasted for 90 days. Again with the expiry dates, WTF?! We got on the tram and it took about 10 mins to get to the place. Brad met us at the front and the entrance to the place was from the alley (as I suspected since there wasn't a side door/stairs that led upstairs beside the 1 hour photo store). Along the way to the back entrance, he asked if I was American, and I gasped and said 'no, Canadian, I'm a little more polite than they are' and he quickly apologized about that, but had a laugh. He seemed very down to earth and super laid back, but not like a hippie or high laid back.

More of a cool Mark Ruffalo, laid back (PS. He's the Hulk in The Avengers). He opened the door and the stairs were right in front of us, and to the left was a bunch of discarded items, which looked more like garbage, and he said "here are the stairs and that's um, storage". 'Storage? You mean garbage', is what I thought to myself. We walked up enough steps that would match half the height of a small store. There was a kitchen that looked really run down, the cupboards were stained with nastiness. Next to the kitchen was the small bathroom. Talk about shitting where you eat. It was even more nasty! Then Brad asked if I wanted to see the rooms and I thought 'no need, I ain't living in this dump' but seeing as how I'm representing Canadians and wanted to be polite, I responded "of course I do" with a fake smile. If he was smart, he probably would've seen my response as 'are you f-ing kidding me?'. We went up another flight of stairs and we passed by his room, which looked like a dump. Guitars, clothes and garbage were laying all around. We proceeded to the room that was for rent. I went inside and there was no bed. I asked if a bed was included, just to entertain, but he said no. Perfect way out, "oh ,I need a bed for sure, otherwise I can't sleep here".

The room also looked dirty and slummy, almost could be a room out of a horror film where someone would be tortured or murdered in (this picture is close to what we saw, minus the bed and sink, and maybe only half the gross stuff on the wall). He showed us the other room that was also for rent. It had 3 couches in the room and he was asking for $250/wk for it. Again, to no surprise, dumpy and slummy. Dead flies were all over the window sill that overlooked a busy street that had heritage park type of buildings. Nostalgic feel type neighbourhood/we don't give a shit neighbourhood. We said thanks and quickly walked out as fast as we could.

Our next stop was a couple of blocks from the Essendon train station. We had to take the tram back to Central Melbourne Station then take the train from there. At the station we decided to eat first.

I ordered hungry jacks (aka Burger King) and my sister had a chinese bun. We both sat at a table where there were 2 strangers on the other side of the table (not together) and we each asked the person opposite of us if we could sit there. There was a middle aged man in front of my sister having a big mac and I had an oriental chick who was eating a packed rice lunch. The man said no one was sitting there and the chick moved her stuff out of the way for me to place my food down. As I was eating, my sister used my iPhone as a hot spot for her iPhone to respond to some messages. I wanted to strike a conversation with the Chinese girl, but she seemed like she was really into her food. When my sister came back, I had finished eating and got up to leave. I told the girl "thank you for letting me sit there for lunch" and she smiled. Off to take the train. Luckily we bought passes for the day which included unlimited rides on trains, trams and buses until midnight. Each pass was $7.

We arrived at the Essendon station in about 10 minutes. We walked another 10 minutes to Mark's building. He buzzed us up. His emails preceeding to our meeting were very friendly. I told him that I was from Calgary, Canada and he said that he didn't allow line dancing in his lounge. He asked if I was a Sens fan as his girlfriend works in Ottawa. I said I'm a big Flames fan, but that I didn't mind the Senators. He was a 33 year old Jetstar pilot who just got home from flying. His apartment was very modern. Very much what I'm used to, compared to what I've seen so far.

He had a big screen LCD tv, PS3, and apple tv. (pretty much like the picture, only He had an L-shaped couch). His whole apartment was very warm, which I like very much! We mentioned that and he said that he liked warm temperatures at all times and can't stand why Australians leave their houses so cold. He's from New Zealand. He showed me the room that was available and it was medium sized. He opened the closet to show me the size and inside was the exact same MEC bag that I bought to travel Australia! Only his was smaller than mine, I hear that more often than not. We asked about the area and he showed us a Google map on his tv. Super nice guy. After about 10 minutes, he started talking to my sister about Air Canada as he wanted to apply either to Air Canada or Westjet since he was planning to move to Canada next year. After another 10 minutes they were done talking. He said if we have anymore questions to not hesitate to ask him. He also said he would be busy tomorrow as he was watching the AFL championship game at a friends house, even though he didn't like the sport. He also said that the entire city shuts down for it as it's the best sport in the world (according to Australians), and it's only played in southern Australia. He says it's a bunch of grown men that push each other and that it should be called gayFL.

We walked back to the train station and started our way to the last place to see for the day. It was in Yarraville. We got there about an hour ahead of the scheduled meeting time so we spent some time at a cafe shop. I ordered a coffee, but the barrista asked what that was. I thought, 'really? you work in a cafe shop and don't know what a coffee is?'. She said they had lattes and cappuccinos. So I ordered a latte. My sister and I also shared a carrot cupcake. It was pretty good, with lots of nuts on top of the icing.

It was time to go and it took us about a 15 minute walk, in the cold as it was raining, to get to the house. The ad said that they had 1 room available and that 3 girls currently lived there. Sweet. Eve answered the door and welcomed us in. Terry was the other girl that was there too. Eve offered us tea, but I usually don't bother with things like that, but since I was really cold, I took the offer. I had white tea, which was Terry's favorite. Eve looked like a regular 22 year old student. My first thought was that she had thick dark brown eyebrows. Terry looked kinda awkward, but she was a friendly 23 year old student. Maybe it was her posture. Eve told me that since she never really slept in her room, she might as well as rent it out. She was saying that she always stayed in her partners room and that last night was the first night she slept in her room. She said that her partner was away for a week and that SHE would be back in the next couple of days. Lesbian alert! Awesome! I asked about who the lumber in the backyard belonged to and she told us this story of how she used to live in a warehouse with her partner and her partner built rooms with the lumber that was lying around in the warehouse and how that she also built stages and a bar and how they turned the warehouse into a night club basically. A little far-fetched, but interesting to hear. Obviously we know who is the male counterpart of the two lesbians. After about 30 mins in the cold house, we were about to walk back to the train station in the rain, but then Eve offered to drive us there in her moms car. What a nice lesbian. She dropped us off and we thanked her many times.

We were done our tours of places for the day. Now to make a decision while we ate at the Curry house again. It was sooooo good last night that we went again. This time I ordered the Ban Mee Dry dish and my sister ordered the Mini Crispy Spring Roll and Curry Famosa and a Coconut House Cendol.

Eve's place was $110/wk and it included utilities. You can't beat that. Plus I think they would be fun to hang out with, lesbians and all. Mark said he would be gone all month next month, so I would have his place to myself, but I think I would be super bored.

Then there was Zeena, aiyiyiyi!! $175 not including utilities. I think the best choice was to save money, so I called Eve back and she said she needed to discuss with Terry and that she would either call or text me back. You would've thought they discussed it right away, so my sister was thinking they already decided no. I don't think they wanted a guy there anyways. So no possible threesomes. Oh well. Another time? I called back Zeena as she emailed me the night we saw her place and she wanted to offer the place to me. I called her back and asked if they could lower the rent to $160 not including utilities and they were good with that deal. Hurray, I have a place to live finally! That night I went to sleep happy and only had one more worry, to find a job.

Day 7 - September 29

We had to get up for a viewing at 10:00am in Northcote. We got up at 9:00am and went downstairs of the hostel in time for free breakfast. It consisted of a choice of cereal, toast, and coffee or tea. The bread was super soft. My sister had 2 of them. We caught the bus toward our destination. The weather was super crappy. Cloudy and raining. Took about 30 mins to arrive. We got there and Nicholas, a German man with bubble eyeglasses, met us at the door. he looked about 35. We were hoping to get out of the cold, but when we walked in the house, it was no better. Have Melbourne people never heard of heaters? The room was fairly big. I would hope so since they were asking for $170/wk, not including utilities. The one floor house was pretty small, just 3 bedrooms, a fair size kitchen (with table) and medium living room. It looked very homely and old. Zeena, warrior princess (aye yiyiyiyiyiyi!!!), was the chick I had talked to earlier on the phone about the place, even said some of the cupboards don't open since it's so old. I asked who owned the house and she said an old chinese couple, whom couldn't speak english very well, so they had their daughter interpret between them and Zeena. The daughter was fed up with that so Zeena now only deals with the between them and Zeena. The daughter was fed up with that so Zeena now only deals with the realtor. There was only a washer, no dryer. The dryer was a clothes rack that was outside in the backyard, the typical round one that can turn 360 degrees. Zeena was good looking, I could tell that if she dressed up and had time to get ready, she would look super hot. She was super nice and currently work as a substitute teacher, though she called it a relief/emergency teacher. I laughed at her when she told me that. She taught drama and art. She also worked part time working gigs that an agency would give her. Nicholas had just arrived from Germany 3 days earlier and didn't have a job yet. The other roommate, Rahuul, was on vacation. He had a sweet gig where a school sponsored him from Spain to travel the world to learn about their cultures. Talking to the both of them, I connected very easily, more so with the warrior princess. After about 30 mins in the house, it was time to head back to the CBD. It was liveable, but the price was pretty high. We decided that an executive decision will be made after we saw all the places. We stopped at a Mcdonalds because they have free wifi. How sad is that? I bought a mocha just so that at least we were not loitering and were paying customers. I think we milked that mocha for about an hour.

They had a section where it looked like Starbucks.

A good selection of baked goods and many of the same drinks that Starbucks would serve.

After that, we stopped by a Pie Face shop for.....pie.

Each pie had a different face depending on the flavour. It's a neat concept.

The last time we were in Sydney, these shops were everywhere, it was no different in Melbourne (pronounced Mel-bun).

We ordered a chicken thai curry that has sleeping eyes and a wide open mouth. It tasted awesome. We headed to the Victoria Market finally. It was always too cold to go, but the sun finally came out.

Along the way, we cut through the mall and came across my sister's store (pop melissa, hard to see in the photo).

We also stopped at a cupcake store and they sold a giant cupcake, the size of your head, for $57!!

We went with the small date cupcake. It definitely wasn't a Melissa Lam cupcake, not even close. It was kinda hard. After we finished it, the girl that sold it to us said it would've tasted better if it was mircowaved for a couple of seconds. Stupid girl! Why didn't she tell us earlier? That's like saying telling my dead body, from jumping out of an airplane, it would've been safer if I had a parachute. Towards the market, we also stopped off at the bank to see if they had my debit/credit card ready. My eyes quickly looked at the office of where that hot chick would be and she was working today. Sweet, sweet eye candy. I went up to the teller for my card and it was finally ready (we were there yesterday to see if it was ready and it was not). Ray, the teller, was very friendly, in a non-gay way. His english was very good, for someone who came over from China 3 years ago. He said that people are only hired if the spoke english well. After speaking with Ray, I told my sister that I wanted a picture of the hot chick.

I stood in front of her open office, holding up my bank card and told my sister to take a picture of me, but obviously she knew to look past that and take a picture of the hot chick. Success!!

Though she took one, then waited about 30 seconds to take another (to make sure that she was looking in the camera's direction the second time) so I thought that might've been a bit suspicious. The pictures don't do her any justice, but trust me, she was hot. Now off to the market.

My sister loves mini doughnuts, and there was a mini doguhtnut looking truck that had 'American Dooughnut' on the side of its truck. They weren't mini, it was the size of a small fist and was filled with strawberry jelly rolled in sugar. It costed a $1 and wasn't that great.

We walked down a bunch of veggie and fruit stands. Apparently there was a shortage of bananas up in Queensland and boosted up the price of them. One stall was selling them at $13/kg!!! Guess the monkeys will be starving all over the world, unless they can afford $13/kg. Canada sells them at $0.69/lb in comparison. We headed into the cheese/bakery section of the market indoors. We looked for food as we were starving.

We ordered some borek. It looked like flat bread that was folded with filling inside.

We each got one. I got spicy lamb and my sister got potatoe.

They tasted really good and was worth the $2.50. We proceeded to walk and the meat and fish butchers were yelling out how fantastic their prices were. It was like listening to Hugh Jackmand and Micheal Cain having a screaming match. We then proceeded to walk down the market where they had miscellaneous things like luggage, socks, shoes, etc. Practically the same stuff that China would have in their street markets. Nothing fancy at all. I went into an eye glasses store. I asked if they had an optomotrist on site as I wanted to see if they could look for my contacts that I think was still stuck on my eyeball. He said to come back tomorrow and that it would cost $29. Somehow I don't think my insurance company will reimburse me if I go see an optomotrist from a farmers market. After the market, we went back to the library for free wifi. I used their computers on the second level where you can sign up for free to use the computer for an hour for porn, I mean research. They also had a room where you could play chess. About 5 tables were set up for that. Interesting that the pieces were all still there, given that there were a lot of asians around, just sayin'. After about 1.5 hours at the State library, we headed to scope out our second place of the day. This one was located in Ascot Vale, about a 20 min tram ride. It was super cold again. A guy from the farmers market said that Melbourne is famous for having 4 seasons in one day, he wasn't kidding!! It was super cold again and raining. We arrived at apartment before Jess, the other tenant. She came 10 mins later. The apartment was on the top floor. Once again, it was freezing in the apartment!! Seriously people, are you Eskimos?! Even an igloo would be warmer. It was much smaller than the other place we saw. A small kitchen, that can't even fit a table, a medium living room and 2 bedrooms. She was asian and spoke a FOB accent. My sister said she looked cute, but I thought otherwise. The rent was for only until December 7th as the land lord was thinking of selling. The rent would also cost me $170, but it included utilities. I wasn't sold on the place.

We left to go eat at the Curry House, a malaysian restaurant that was around the corner from our hostel.

At the restaurant, Melissa ordered a traditional Curry Laksa

and I ordered a Claypot Hawker Crispy Noodle. We also ordered a hot soy bean drink and a hot Tarik Teh drink. The meals were amazing!! The noodles were crispy throughout the bowl and the soup tasted delicious. My sister's spicy meal was just as good too. After we finished the meals, I knew something was brewing in my stomach and it wasn't going to be good. We both had a lot of soup mixed with the 2 drinks we ordered. It was all so good though!! It costed $22.80 in total, the best value we've spent so far. We went back to the hostel and that was the end of our night.