The Executive Summary: 7 days

I don’t know why Australia is shortened to Oz, but whatever the reason, we’ve been in Melbourne for a week now. The flight over was more or less uneventful besides the fact that, once again, someone has eaten a vegetarian meal that did not belong to him or her. On the flight from Los Angeles to New Zealand we were hungrily waiting for the food trolleys to arrive at our row and when they finally did come they asked me which of the meat options I preferred. I replied with a question regarding the whereabouts of my “Asian vegetarian meal”. They had given it to someone else. The thing about special meals on flights is that they don’t have extras, so if someone who is not entitled to one actually accepts it, the person who actually ordered it has to eat the “normal” options. Luckily for me, they gave me a meal that they were offering in first class: oven baked goats’ cheese on a bed of spiced lentils. Yum.

Apartment Hunting…Not so happy

We decided to leave apartment hunting until the next day when we were fresh and full of energy. Due to the nature of crossing many time zones, we were naturally feeling a big jet lagged and went to bed early and woke up extremely early. The next morning we set out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, obviously unaware of the trials a tribulations involved in apartment hunting in Melbourne, and headed over the to riverside Southbank—one of Melbourne’s swankiest inner city suburbs. Once we reached the real estate agent’s office, sat down and told them what we were looking for their reply did not reflect the availability of apartments listed at their website just a few days prior. We saw two apartments, both gorgeous, one with quirks, one perfect. We kept the perfect one in mind and decided that it was only logical that we should see other apartments before agreeing on anything. Unfortunately the rest of the day was disappointing. Everyone else in the city seemed to be looking for the same thing we were and according to the first real estate agent we visited, the fact that we “were not working” and had “insufficient funds” (AUS$4K is hardly insufficient funds for young 20-somethings!) in our bank accounts was counting against us. Swank inner-city living is unfortunately out of our reach and we have once again resorted to living in student accommodation.

Sunday was much the same as Saturday, no luck finding an available apartment. It wasn’t until we had visited the umpteenth student accommodation building in an unlikely location that we struck gold. Our new home for the next year will be located at College Square—a brand new student accommodation apartment building on the upper end of the same street we lived on just 5 ½ months ago. It’s a one bedroom apartment with an equipped hostess kitchen (also known as a kitchen that faces the dinning area and is equipped with a bar-like structure), study area with shelving and desks, a view of the city, a balcony, large mirrored floor to ceiling wardrobes, a generously sized bedroom and bathroom. The building also has a gym and a pool. Very nice.