It all began around 7am on a very bitter morning in upstate New York. After having just finished packing my life away into two suit cases and a backpack the night before, we loaded them up and set off to Syracuse. I had to wait about an hour for my flight out of Syracuse, which left at 10:10 am. The little jet had only two rows of two on either side of it. When I first sat down at my assigned seat, there was a small, ancient asian woman next to me at the window. Within the first few seconds of my arrival, she started making quite disturbing sounds that pointed towards the eventual hacking up of a hairball. Fortunately for me, the flight attendant (who happened to look identical to Kevin Spacey) informed us that the row I was seated in was the exit row. The old woman had to move on account of her being unable to speak English, so I thought I was in the clear.
Instead of lucking out and having a row to myself, an older pilot who was hopping to Chicago came and sat next to me. Over the next two hours, I got to learn all about piloting, airport security, his time spent training air force pilots in Texas, his travels to Dubai, the baby squirrel that befriended his granddaughters (I even got to see pictures on his phone), and a whole lot more. Some of it was interesting, some of it wasn’t, but I didn’t have much of a choice. The way he talked and told stories reminded me a lot of Chris, my old boss at Agway.
The plane landed in Chicago a little after 11am, so I had about four hours of waiting around to do. I wandered about O’hare for a while, had some lunch, and tried desperately to find an outlet to plug my laptop into. Outletless, I conceded defeat and read my book for a while instead. My plane out of Chicago left around 3:30pm. I sat in the aisle, with two highschool age looking kids next to me that, from what I gathered, were on some group trip to somewhere. I watched the movie Unstoppable, the train movie with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, on the plane and then read for a little while more. As much as I liked my roomy aisle seat, I was quite annoyed that I only got to see glimpses of the sunset over the mountains as we neared Los Angeles.
The plane landed some time after 5pm in LA. I got some dinner and then went outlet searching again. Luckily, LAX has a few scattered cell phone charging hubs that small groups of people were gathering around, so I staked my claim and hunkered down with the rest of them. I spent the next 5 hours clustered about with the rest of the airport’s population—all spread out to the ends of our respectable chords for some semblance of privacy.
My flight to Sydney boarded around 9:30pm. I sat at a window seat next to a cute old couple from California. The 14 hour flight from hell was just that. It was sooo long. The dumb lady in front of me decided to turn her little air blaster thing on but then pointed it away from her so that it conveniently ricocheted onto me—oh how I hate air blowing on me. Then, I suck at sleeping on planes, even with sleeping pills. I probably got like, two to three hours tops of sleep, scattered about in like 10-20 minute intervals. But yeah, I literally got to stand up once to go to the bathroom. Once, in 14 hours. My legs hated me. Oh, but the sunset over the pacific was reaaally pretty.
We landed in Sydney at 7am their time. I was half tempted to waltz into one of the airport bars and order a drink but, it was 7am, and I was mostly exhausted so I didn't. I had to hang out in the airport then for another two and a half hours. It wasn't bad though, I found the book that I have to read for uni, The Boat by Nam Lee, in the airport so I started reading that. It's actually reaaaally good, it's a collection of 7 short stories, and the writing is spectacular.
The flight to Melbourne was lovely, it was on the exact same huge plane that we took from LA, but with about 80% less people. I got to have a whole row to myself and just stretched out and read my book. Oh, and the best part was that it only lasted an hour, so it felt like I was hardly even on the plane compared to the 14 hour long flight.
Sooo then I got to Melbourne and had to go through customs. Oddly enough I met a kid in line that goes to RIT and is studying abroad at the same school as me, so that was random but nice. We kept each other company while we waited forever and a year at the baggage claim. That was fun too--apparently I missed the memo about getting a cool little push cart like everyone else, so I was a champ and hauled all of my shit around myself. It wasn't fun.
Theeen I got to take a lovely 50 dollar taxi ride to my apt. But really though, 50 dollars? WTF. And, the whole driving on the other side of the road thing is reaaally going to take some getting used to, it's just soo odd. So, I get and walk to my apt place, and right about then everything started getting really frustrating.
First, I had to wait forever in the little front room cuz the two asian chicks working the counter are useless and annoying. Oh, and, just for your waiting room pleasure, there's literally a constant, relatively loud ringing noise that never stopped, and no one seemed too concerned to make it stop. Oh, and I was suuuper hot, all sweaty and gross, tired, and just wanting to shower. Then it was my turn to talk to the annoying asian girl.
I thought all I had to do was pay my rent and bond and be set, but it turns out that you can't just pay for a bond, oh no. First the lady said I needed a check for the bond, so luckily, I planned ahead and packed a check book, but first I had to dig through my backpack to find it--in the meantime the dumb asian moved on to helping someone else instead of waiting one minute, then I had to wait all over again. Oh, but get this, they don't accept personal checks. Apparently there are only two acceptable ways to go about paying for my bond: A. go open up a bank account at an aussie bank and then wait a couple of days for money to get wired to it so that I can have some kind of bank check or B. have 997 dollars cash on me so that I can go to the post office and have them give me a money order check thing. That's it. So, until I figure out how or where to do either one of those, they're holding my passport hostage. You would think that they would mention details like this on their FAQ section, instead of just saying “arrive and pay your bond and first month’s rent.”
Next on the agenda, the annoying girl was asking if I had a copy of my CoE or visa, which I didn't cuz they're both electronic, then if I had a student ID card to prove that I was a student at Melbourne, but I don't get one of those until the 18th so no. Luckily, I convinced her that I wouldn't have been allowed into the country if I didn't have a visa, and I couldn't get a visa without my CoE, so she finally dropped that. Finally, she let me sign some papers and gave me my keys and what not.
I finally got to leave the annoying, loudly ringing front room and go find my apt, room 717. So, I drag my suit cases and carry all my shit to the elevators, only to find out that getting to my room wasn't going to be an easy task either. Turns out that one of the two elevators never works, and the other one only works when it wants to. Me and some other kids literally stood there for at least 10 minutes, pushing the buttons and watching the door close, pause as though it was goooing to start doing its job and lifting us to our destination, and then beep mockingly and open back up again. 10 minutes. So, I FINALLY got to my room and put down all of my shit.
Want to hear about my room? Of course. Well, let me tell you, it’s something. All you need to know is that it's extremely small. There’s literally a wardrobe (no hangers, add to shopping list) and a long desk unit with shelves and drawers on one wall. On the other wall there’s a single bed and in the corner I have a sink and mirror/medicine cabinet. The view out of my window looks creepily directly across a courtyard thing to another apartment building with balconies and all of that. It’s probably only like, 20-25 feet from my window. The girl on the 6th floor is watching futurama right now. Yep. Creepy. Oh, there’s also no trashcan in here. So annoying. Anyways, I set my things down and start prioritizing.
Task 1: hook up internet so that I can check my email/hear from Elisa/talk to people at a reasonable hour. Should be simple, the sheet I was given even said "3 easy steps to instant connection!" pfft. Before I dive into how uneasy and not so instant the connection was, let’s discuss the internet in general first. To give you an idea, here’s a direct quote taken off of the back of the 3 easy steps paper: "Australians are paying 9 times more for broadband that is 35 times slower than the world's fastest networks. A report from the US has reveals that Australia has become the Third World of broadband developed nations, ranking 26 out of 30 countries for its transfer speeds." Followed by: "International students beware--you will notice the difference. Our beloved government are working on a solution--don't hold your breath!"
Yep. So, the minimum package starts at 26$ a month for a 10GB quota. For the month. And the 10GB includes downloading and uploading. Oh, and it's not actually just 10GB per month, it's 5GB during the "peak hours" (I already forgot what those were) and 5GB for "non peak hours." The next option on the list is 20GB for 50$ a month. Shoot me.
Anyways, back to hooking it up. I filled out all of their dumbshit forms and payment things, thinking that would be the end of it. Instead, I got a response saying that I need to find out my username and password, which would usually have been texted to me if I had an australian phone, which I didn’t. That was when I started to get really frustrated. After a bit I decided I should go downstairs to talk to the annoying Asians in the ringing room to figure out my internet. Luckily, on my way there I passed by the main lounge room downstairs and heard football talk so I wandered in and sat down.
There were 4 or 5 kids there and I got to catch the last 2 minutes of the superbowl, that was fun. But, as we were sitting there I heard someone say Joe Pa, and was like uhm, what? So yeah, one of the first people I met here, other than Chloe, my aussie friend I made in my 10 minute elevator experience earlier, was a girl from Penn State. Go figure. So started talking to Laura (Penn State girl) and Katie?, a girl from Chicago, and this one aussie named Leah who was reading a book. I started whining about my internet and Laura told me she had the same problem and had to call the company to get her login info. After a little more hanging out I went back up to try that, but every time I tried using my phone to call the number some aussie computer chick came on and told me it was disconnected. That’s about when I decided to blow off task 1 and move on.
Task 2: take a shower—also not nearly as easy as it sounds. First, I needed shampoo/conditioner etc. I thought it would be easy since there was a little convenient store right outside of my apt, but it turns out that they only sold shampoo and no conditioner? Who does that? I also thought I’d try my luck at the ATM in the store to see how much I could withdraw a day, (keeping in mind that I need 997$ in cash). Turns out I could only get 60 dollars? So I left angrily with nothing and decided to go looking for a different store. Generally, it shouldn’t have been bad, it was still hot outside but it was nice and I liked walking around. That was until I realized how stupid I was for not putting socks on when I changed into my slip-ons before leaving the apt. I am now the proud owner of many huge, painful blisters—so that’s fun.
Blisters or not, I carried on to find some damn shampoo. Laura and Katie told me there was some kind of relatively big-ish store some number of blocks down the street, but I finally gave up cuz of the blisters and ducked into the next little shopette thing I found. Luckily, this one at least had some shampoo. Right about now is when I start realizing that everything here costs a fortune and a half. I bought two rather small bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and a tube of tooth paste for 25 dollars. Cool. My walk back was quite painful, but I stopped halfway to grab some Subway cuz the last thing I ate was gross airplane food at about 5am (keeping in mind that its prooobably about 4pm now). Oh, and there’s no 5 dollar foot longs here, I paid 9 bucks for a 6 inch sub, with no oil and vinegar (very disappointing), and what would pass as a smaaall drink in the US.
Finally, I had food and shower supplies! Things were looking up, right? Wrong. I got back to my building to find a small posse of people, Laura and Katie included, lounging by the elevators. Turns out the one elevator that works didn’t feel like working. We all literally stood there for probably 15 minutes talking, bitching about overpriced Australian shit, much to the dismay of the one Australian boy in the group. Laura apparently bought a 24 pack of coke cans for… 24 bucks. Wtf. Also, apparently minimum wage here is like, 15 dollars? Ugh. Sooo expensive.
I think after about 15-20 minutes I finally gave up on waiting around cuz I still desperately needed to eat/shower. Turns out the only stairs are actually the fire escape stairs outside of the building, so I got to climb 7 flights of stairs, carrying my lunch and shower stuff, with aching, blistering feet while suffering from the heat. Yeap, that was fun too. Eventually I made it to my room and got to eat. Unfortunately, showering wasn’t nearly as relaxing as I’d hoped, since apparently the two little turn dials for hot and cold aren’t reliable in the least. My shower started off sweltering hot and then suddenly switched to something akin to ice water about mid-shampooing. So I blindly fumbled around and turned a bunch of knobs and probably made it a lot worse. Eventually I gave up and just took a rushed, luke warm shower. At least I was finally clean.
With eating and showering out of the way, I decided to tackle the internet again. I’d discovered earlier during the elevator hangout session that the number I was dialing was still in service, so long as I didn’t use my own phone to call it. Turns out the elevator didn’t want to work then, either, so I got to walk back down 7 flights of steps to go back to the ringing room of death to hang out with my favorite Asians. Once again, I had to wait for eternities to just use the phone, but I finally got my information. After all of that, I holed up in my room, went on skype for a while, and then wrote this short novella for you all.
I went downstairs around 9 or so and hung out with a group of kids in the lounge flipping through random tv shows. I spent at least an hour and a half down there hanging out and waiting for Elisa to arrive, but naturally she showed up the minute that I decided to run up stairs for a second. In the end, we found each other, and retired to my room for a few hours of chatting. Finally around 1am or so I got to get some sleep, it'd only been about 50 hours since I'd last woken up, no biggie.
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