January blues - Blogabond

Sadly our time in our luxurious pad in Manly was up....so we had to wave a fond farewell to Paula and get the ferry back to circular quay and make our way to the inner west suburbs and our new abode in Glebe. We felt very sorry for ourselves as we checked back into a hostel for the first time in quite a while, but we managed to find quite a good spot by the windows in one of the ridiculously huge rooms.

Over the month that we actually ended up staying here we saw plenty of people come and go - one of them, Chanty (said in an Essex trying to be posh accent!) had us mesmerised by her sheer lack of general knowledge about the world and were stunned when she told us that she'd just climbed kilimanjaro!!! Her best "friend" was, in the nicest possible way, an annoying skanky ho...who didn't put sheets on her bed the whole time she was there and left all her crap all over the floor!

We blame her for the trauma that was.....one morning when Laura was in the shower one of the German girls in our dorm threw herself off her top bunk screaming....Bets turned around to see what can only be described as a saucer sized mother of a spider (think tarantula thick legs) crawling its way around the ceiling above this poor girls bed. Needless to say chaos ensued! Coops was instructed to not look anywhere so as to be able to continue getting dressed whilst Bets kept an eye on its movements. We thought it had gone away to its hiding hole when all of a sudden it moved at lightning speed across the ceiling and then without warning dropped to the floor (who knew spiders would just drop for no apparent reason...little bastard!) and headed straight towards us sending a room full of screaming girls jumping onto anything elevated and Coops dashing out the door to yells of "GO AND GET HELP!!!!!" She returned with the receptionist armed with some killer bug spray and after much moving of bags and beds the poor spider was no more. (Coops does not agree with this last statement - she says "god intended it to die.")

Other characters in the dorm included...the girl who felt the need to sleep naked, the 18 year old private school girl who kept talking about her "gap yaaaa" in india, the annoying dutch girl who literally hated laura after she finished the communal cornflakes at breakfast time and various other annoying travellers (not to stereotype at all, but Germans are really not the best room mates!) So it goes without saying that we were desperate to escape!! Especially considering every time we cooked dinner, we emerged feeling lucky to be alive after the death trap of the kitchen. Literally, pots and pans precariously piled to the ceiling in the sinks, saucepans with no handles full of boiling water being carried around using teatowels and far too many people in one space. Oh and there were no forks. Ever. You will be surprised to hear that there was actually a cleaner, Mark, but he was weird and kept trying to be our friend and cook our meals for us as he thought he was an amazing chef. We think he was a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic!

Glebe however was a really nice area in the studenty part of town (altho there weren't actually any students because of the holidays) filled with lots of cute cafes and charity shops where we discovered the amazing vinnies and stocked up on lots of cheap books!

Job and flat hunting ensued in earnest through the month of January and we probably spent a small fortune on using the internet. It was a weird reality hit to be doing up our CVs and emailing all the agencies around Sydney. Days were then spent going in and out of the city, registering with them and being told "there's not much work available at the moment!" We did not appreciate this advice. Inteviews happened....we were actually placed against each other for more than one position (we hate agencies) but it felt like things kept falling through and we started to get a bit annoyed and down as we watched our savings dwindle away (apparently Sydney is the most expensive place to live in Australia!!! Great!)

And typically, if we had of been working we would of got an extra days holiday as it was their national bank holiday, Australia Day - an excuse for a big piss up!! Do not fear, we made sure we made the most of this and headed to The Rocks where there was a fun music festival happening to cheer ourselves up! It was a scorcher of a day and we enjoyed sitting in the sun and moving between the many different stages and discovering some totally cool new bands! Gemma and her fun new house mates joined us - yay we have friends!

By the end of January things were starting to look up. After hours scrolling through GumTree and going to visit some 'interesting' places we finally found our new home near Darling Harbour....Unit 98/336 Sussex Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000!!! It's very teeny but a really good location right in the city and we can see the sky tower from our balcony (yes we have a balcony) that looks out over our swimming (yes we have a swimming pool)!! We were lucky to be living with a really sweet spanish couple (who try their hardest to speak English, despite living in England for a year they can barely managed a sentence without dropping back into Spanish, hilarious!) and oh yes did we mention...theres a chinese man in the lounge?!?! No he didn't just get lost on his way to the local chinese restaurant (we're essentially in china town) but this is actually the norm here where landlords try to bundle as many students and travellers into one place as physically possible! He has a sheet separating him from the lounge, so that makes it totally normal right?!?!

We were so excited to move in and actually be able to unpack. We've made it our own little place with pictures of all you lovely people and our Australian flags on the wall of our bedroom! (Because we now consider ourselves Australian citizens!) With the pillows that we had stolen from the hostel (do you know how expensive household things are here?!?) we made a delightful double bed for the both of us (yes we are sharing!) with a sleeping bag for a doona! We are poor :-( Please send money to address above :-)

After the hell that is recruitment agencies (did we mention we hate them?) we both managed to find some work. Bets found herself not so glamorously in a call centre for a month, luckily not actually making sales calls but just putting stroppy businessmen through to their conference calls. The only redeeming factor of this was the free dominos lunches and finding a new bestie from New Zealand, Hannah. Luckily whilst here, Bets found out that, through some good contacts, she had got a marketing job in a charity (old habits die hard!) Soon she was tottering off to work in the cool area of Paddington where it turns out she actually has quite a bit of responsibility as Direct Marketing Coordinator at The Benevolent Society!

Coops on the other hand started off changing the future of contraception, in the most full on temp job she's ever had. When the offer of an actual events job came through she jumped at the chance, even though it was an hours train ride away in South West Sydney! This was to be the best job ever, as she got to meet a home and away hottie whilst organising a community festival day in her new role as Events Officer for Campbelltown City Council! Just an fyi, Campbelltown is slightly less glamorous than Paddington because of the terrifying bogans, tramps and teenage mums who reside there, which makes Peckham look like Notting Hill.

It was great to be settled down and working, but the reality of the 9-5 was a bit of a shocker!!! This wasn't supposed to be part of "living the dream!!!!!!!" Here's to our new life in Sydney......

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written by

coopsandbets on May 20, 2011 from Sydney, Australia

from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!

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