Turning tides

I had told Paul, my house mate, that I probably wasn’t coming home before 11 pm or something. As much adversity I had last week with finding a place to stay, so much prosperity I had since yesterday. It started when I received I message trough a website for share houses. I had subscribed to this website back at home, but it hadn’t given me any real desirable rooms.

Now all of a sudden it seems to get me the best room I could ever wish for. Some guy Paul had responded on my ad, saying that he was looking for a roommate. I called him and arranged to even have a look the same day. Within 15 minutes after I had entered the almost brand new house it was settled, I had found myself a room. Tomorrow, I would be moving, goodbye crumbling hostel, hello nice house!

Today Jacqueline and I would have dinner in the city and then go to the observation deck together. I called Jacqueline from RMIT and arranged to meet her at Flinders street station at 6.10 pm. Eventually she turned up at 6:45 after sending me a dozen of messages that she wasn’t going to make it.

She wanted to go to Gopals, a vegetarian restaurant that I had discovered just a few days before. The restaurant provides very good meals for little money (about €5) and is run by Hara Krishna.

Observation deck
Around half past 9 we entered the elevator of the Rialto Towers which took us to the observation deck on the 55th floor in only 40 seconds. It was more than worth the money. Raised a 234 meters above ground level a see of millions of lights stretched out before our eyes.

Just as I mentioned that at the Eifel tower you can also go outside (so you are not bothered by the glass when taking photos), we discovered that there were two outside terraces, one on the north and one on the south side of the observation deck. This was a nice opportunity to make some awesome panoramic pictures!

It was not possible to walk all the way around, because a part of the observation deck had been marked out for special guests only. Just before we had entered the lift we already wondered about the formally dressed girls that passed us and it now started to make sense. Some spoiled rich kid clearly spent a lot of money to hire a part of the observation deck to throw a birthday party. That’s something to remember for my next birthday; mum, dad, I want to celebrate my 25th birthday here, can I? :-)

Insignia
On the first night in Melbourne I discovered this fantastic bar at the corner of Flinders and King street, called Insignia. Most of the times it is not very crowded, which is one of the reasons that it is such a fantastic bar to chill out. The interior consists mainly out of wood and is decorated with luxurious sofas and lounge chairs. The ceiling is relatively high, but somehow it creates a pleasant spacious environment without losing the warm atmosphere due to the wooden interior and the subtle lighting.

Jacqueline and I decided to order a bottle of red wine and have some anti paste dish. It was only a few hours since we ate, but I felt a bit hungry again. We had spent more than half an hour on the observation deck, gazing at whole greater Melbourne. Back on solid ground we got to see an impressive promotional video about Melbourne and the Great Ocean road and after that we had found our way to Insignia.

I could see this was getting late. It was already past 10 and we had still half a bottle of wine to finish. I wasn’t in the mood of hurrying and also didn’t feel like lugging all my baggage too my house at this time of the day. I called Paul and told him the move was postponed to next day. I felt it was a better idea to spent one more night in the hostel. If only I had known…

Remarkable people

The first week in Melbourne I spent in the All Nations Backpackers hostel on Spencer street. The advantage of the hostel was that it is in the center of the city. The major disadvantage is that you have to share the room with up to 8 people. That means you don’t have any privacy and always have to take into account that others could be there. This even restricts you on simple things like turning on the light, which makes finding things most of the times a real challenge.

But then again, you meet some remarkable persons. The day I arrived there were 3 people in the room that I was booked. They had been staying in the hostel for quite a while and had just moved from another room together because it had to be painted. Later I heard that it had more to do with the bugs that were terrorizing the room and, more annoyingly, the people in it.

Ben, a young typically Australian guy, works at a bar. That means he is sleeping most of the day and working at night, so I did not see him frequently. But he is always in for a chat, always cheerful and really nice to be around.

Gram, a guy in his mid 40’s, is a bit too convinced of himself, even arrogant most of the times. With his pretended life experiences he always tries to convince you he knows best. Apart from working in the hostel he spends his days watching movies on his laptop or sleeping. When we first met, it was clear that we wouldn’t be best friends, but after a incident (I was folding my laundry, not aware that Gram was in the room and apparently making too much noise) he started to just ignore me.

Jacqueline, is originally Malaysian, but her parents emigrated to New Zealand when she was 11. She had come to Melbourne with her boyfriend in February, because it had always been her dream to live in Australia, and especially Melbourne. Unfortunately things didn’t work out between her and her boyfriend. Luckily she recently has found a job and is now saving money to get herself a nice apartment. Probably because of her length you would estimate her age around 20, when in fact she is already 28!

One of the most annoying things of Gram is his concern for Jacqueline. At first sight it seems nice of him to take care of her as she is just alone in Australia, emotionally disturbed. But his looking after her turned out to be more of an attempt to control her life, watching every step she takes. At first I had the impression that Jacqueline didn’t really mind, but as I got to know her better it became clear that she really dislikes the way Gram is always watching her. I asked her why she didn’t tell him so, but she is a far too nice person to be that honest with people. She is more polite than is good for her.

The student room

Because Peter, my supervisor, is on a conference in Singapore for the week, I don’t have much to do this first week. I have already finished reading the article and paper that was recommended by Peter.

I’m going to try to give you an impression about the hard work that is done here. In total 7 students are seated here (including myself), of which 2 are PhD students.

Tasha, honor student, is to Tasmania for the week for a performance of the child choir that she’s part of. Normally she is sitting everywhere throughout the room, except at her own desk. Then there is Jarrad, aka Radar, who is very busy now tinkering a Mario question mark box. Matt, who seems to be hard working sometimes, but is easily distracted and has just joined Martin at the pc in his quest to protect his castle from pursuers: “These kamikaze guys are great!”

One of the PhD students is Michael, who is also a vegetarian (how coincidental is that) is busy installing Matlab when he feels the call of nature: “Jarrad, I need to urinate, can you go for me?” The other PhD student is Andrew, who has joined Peter to the conference.

As you can see we are all very hardworking here, so I better go have a look if there is some more coffee.

Superduper mega mall

Everything seems to be mega here in Melbourne, the streets, the sky scrapers, the city itself, the library, and so do the shopping malls. In the middle of the center of Melbourne, at the crossing of Swanston and Bourke street is Melbourne Central, a huge shopping center with underneath the central subway station. Beside shops the shopping center houses a lot of restaurants and other places to eat.

To keep things orderly and easy to find there are huge interactive TV screens on every floor. They provide you with a search engine for locating the place that you're looking for. After selecting your destination on the touch screen a animation shows you were it is located and a voice tells you how to get there.

The heart of the mall consists of a gigantic cone shaped glass dome with in the center an old brick tower. To provide the visitors of the mall with the time, there is a huge clock, or maybe I should say watch, hanging at a balcony, opposite of the tower.

Coolest library ever

Today I visited the State Library of Victoria, which according to the Lonely Planet should even be worth visiting for the building itself. And it definitely is! The central 6 floors high dome is overwhelming. On the ground floor of the dome is a reading room with 8 long tables, each with one end aligned to the center, the other end pointing outwards. In between every two of these tables are 3 smaller tables arranged, providing even more places to sit.

On the different floors that circle around the central dome are various exhibitions. You can even get to the 6th floor to have a magnificent view inside the dome. On the 2nd floor is a exhibition of paintings about the history of Melbourne. Some of them even almost seem to come alive, so real and vivid they are painted.

But it got even better as I discovered the Experidome, a experimental multimedia area, where you can play games on 50” tft widescreens, watch movies and cartoons on a huge projector screen, design on one of the Apple computers or just browse the internet on one of the widescreens if you really have trouble reading small letters.

Amazed as I already was, I really was speechless when the nice woman at the info desk told me that there would be free wireless internet in the library soon. She even handed me a webpage with free wireless hotspots in Melbourne and printed out the first page. In the brochure that she gave me it was explained that registering to the library is completely free!

How peculiar

It was my first night in Melbourne and I was on my way back to my hostel. That afternoon I had met my supervisor Peter Johnston and one of his Phd students, Andrew, who I would be working with. After that I had just been walking through the city. I had explored the mega mall in the center with its impressive dome and had a simple dinner in one of the ‘restaurants’ on Swanston street.

I had just been on the Princess bridge to have a look over the Yarra river by night. The Yarra is often referred to as the river that flows upside down, as it is so muddy that it seems if the bottom of the river is at the surface. It was dark now, so the river just appeared as a black path winding in between the skyscrapers. The lights of the city made it a very nice view, so I tried to make a panoramic picture of it.

When I approached the crossing at Bourke street with William street I noticed that the traffic lights were not working. There were some policemen to control the traffic. Then I suddenly spotted a lot more people in fluorescent yellow vest. In the mean time I had already crossed the street, but I stopped for a while to observe the whole happening and count the number of people regulating the traffic. I counted at least 15 people and as one would expect having too much people on one job is contra efficient. Consequently half of them was doing nothing and the other half was giving contradictory orders. Luckily there was not much traffic (which made them even more redundant), so the traffic could easily regulate itself. Strange guys, those Australians! :-)