3 Things you need to know...

1. "Fawlty Towers" should just have been called "Basil hides things".

2. That Pepsi Light ad with the guy and the girl in the elevator makes no sense.

3. Why do people use the word "Larrikin" to describe Shane Warne? Is that what they call boozing, marriage breaking, drug cheats these days? I use to know a guy at uni that once described himself as a "Larrikin", he was a nice guy, but he also coasted through life and uni drinking too much and relied on a lot of people to get him by with everything he did in life. Is that what Larrikin's do?

So yesterday was my Birthday, now I am the big Two-Seven. I had a pretty decent day, got some lovely small gifts from Astros family which is really nice as I never expect anything from them. My whole family gave me a $100 and a birthday card, so now I will have to think about something to buy with that, most likely it will just get absorbed into my living/moving fund as mostly anything I am paying for these last few weeks are to do with moving, eating, Christmas.

Last night I had Taco Bill just up the road from where I live, the service was friendly but terrible, the food and company was great. Most Mexican restaurants I go to pretty much suck, the service and food is generally always terrible. However because I LOVE Mexican food I always walk away thinking "I had to go back to a Mexican restaurant soon" even though I am eating icicle fajitas or stone cold oil and beans chili.

I'm cleaning the flat at the moment, it is early for me to be out of bed I'm waiting for the pre, pre-pack people to come around and assess that how much stuff I said I had to move is actually the amount of stuff there is to move, I can't remember if they were coming today or tomorrow morning, if it is today they are now officially 5 minutes late.

I am tired, it is god damn smokey outside and I want to be hanging up washing out there but unless I want those clothes to smell like bonfire I guess there is no point hanging it up.

So it is all over, I never have to set foot in my old work ever again, I can move away from being chained to my desk and given allocated times where I have to eat/rest/pee, I never have to take 50+ calls a day from a majority nasty and inconsiderate public and I don't have to put up with a whole host of other things which I can't be bothered posting about.
Everyone was pretty nice about me leaving tonight, you can tell it happens alot, but some people were genuinely sad to see me go. No one was down about what I was doing, it seems everyone wants to get out of the call centre environment, however a LOT of them don't think they ever will. They were all wishing me well and then I would wish them well in return for whatever they want to do next and they sort of give me this look like they could never start doing something they really want to do or was "better" than the job they were in now. It was really quite a strange feeling, I honestly felt like shaking some of those people and screaming "YES IT IS POSSIBLE TO DO WHAT YOU WANT!".
I've been feeling pretty disconnected all this week, in between making the long trip to see my sister in hospital most days and finishing up from work I have just been tired and not into thinking about anything. I've been eating pretty terribly too, not sleeping well, and generally just being pretty useless :) .
I wish I was in bed, however instead I am up late due to the flat right across from us having a party, they are so loud and drunken, makes me glad to be moving to where I am going next, which is not being in a biggish block of flats squashed between two other biggish blocks of flats. Instead I'll be in one giant building cornering two major roads and looking out onto a hotel, hmmm guess I could be facing some different type of noise issues! :)

So today is my second last shift at work, with tomorrow (Saturday) being my last. It has been a pretty good week in terms of being at work, everyone has been really great about me leaving and very supportive about where I am going next (although some are shocked that I didn't get the job "through a friend", or that I won't be working on the phones or programming). I also don't have to gave a flying frack about stats, so I just sit on the phone and help a customer out for over 30 minutes just to get the job done, I go on NR and take a break between tough calls, take slightly longer scheduled breaks, its all good.

Some of you might know that my sister had her long awaited operation on Monday, she is recovering well and I'm going in to see her again after i write this and get ready for work etc. She had to have a bit of her bowel removed (one person said 8cm, one said 8 inches??!!?) we seem to get conflicting stories depending one what doctors we talk to (you should see my parents roll their eyes). My mum has been staying down here for the week to be with my sister to look after her and with good reason, the nursing staff at this hospital have been sub par and my mum has been doing those things that nurses sometimes forget about, like listening and having compassion.

Moving to Sydney is still coming along with my work booking the hotel I'll be staying in when I get up there, which looks very nice! It's right on the waterfront in the CBD sort of opposite Darling Harbour? If anyone wants to come and visit early or mid janurary by all means come because we'll have plenty of room between having this place and also our apartment. The removalists also come next week to check out how much stuff we really have to move, it's all coming along a bit quickly, I'll miss this town.

I'm still a cracker

Because this guy isn't living with me anymore my stupid songs that I sing to myself go unnoticed. Therefore I thought I would post a song I was singing to myself 5 minutes ago while I was counting change out for a train ticket.

Based on the 'Grease Lightning' song from that awful movie 'Grease'.

=================
Go Grease Lightning something something something somethiiiinngg
Go Grease Lightning something something something somethiiiinngg
Something on the floor
Something on the wall
Something near the door
Three dollars forty
Grease Lightning
Burgers Burgers Burgers Burgers Buurrrrgggers
=================

Yeah I have no idea how that happened either.

In one weeks time I will be working my last shift at my current job, you could say I am pretty damn excited at this prospect. Not sure if I am going to tell my TM today or tomorrow, some people at my work have suggested that I only need to tell them 2 days before I leave but I think I'll try to be good about it.

Anyway here are some things I have learnt about the general public's behaviour in the CBD at around midnight when I finish work:

1. People get way too drunk for their own good and like to take street sign/building site material as souvenirs of their night out to the train station with them, but promptly drop them on the train platforms when the train comes, I don't think some people realise that they are pretty much on CCTV a block out in most directions from the train station.

2. Many Emo/Goth kids walk around in packs are wear the same thing. Same goes for ravers these days. Except it seems that no one seems to care anymore about giving alt lifestyle people are razzing as they walk by, guess people became more tolerant all of a sudden!

3. Emo kids are the worse behaved bunch of people on the way home on trains, they drink openly, eat fast food and drop it everywhere, make out drunkenly and revoltingly 30 cm away from other passengers and basically dry hump each other on the carriage floor. They also go on and on about utter crap which I can't even begin to understand.

4. So many freaks and weirdos travel on the late trains during weekdays however you never see them on the train on the weekends? Where do they all go? Do they have like 3 days off or something?

5. People will urinate ANYWHERE in the CBD, I saw one guy the other night get out of a cab on the corner of King St and Flinders Lane and just unzip and let 2 litres of piss out all over the side of the building, this was at 6pm in the daylight on a Saturday people . This isn't a one off thing I see either, every Friday and Saturday night on my way to the train station 90% of the time I will see at least one person urinating on the street. Considering that it only takes me 5 or so minutes to get to the train station that is pretty shocking. Now when I walk home and see something watery on the footpath, I make sure I don't step in it.

Sydney Day 2 Part 3: The Electric Strikes Back!

After finding out about my first rotation, we headed back upstairs to have a meeting with one of the guys who is a head honcho of our division, he was a young well dressed man and we met him in this colourful and scenic meeting room (The whole bloody place has ridiculous views) where he started telling us about how great this company is to work for compared to other places and how it is team and people orientated etc, I was a bit skeptical until he started going into detail about the places he has worked and the situations that had arose, it was a bit of an eye opener. He then showed us around some of the "cool" bits of the building which included this cafe high up in the building which again looked like something out of a futuristic design magazine, I had no idea that corporations like this would even go to the effort to make a workplace so comfortable/enjoyable for their workers.We sat down in one of these "booth" tables at the cafe and I felt like going to sleep and started to realise how tired I was, head honcho guy started going into detail about our entire division and how it all works etc, it was pretty interesting and I learnt that this guy was very smart and a brillant communicator, I guess that is why he is head honcho guy eh?
After all this we headed over the the building we would be working in, it was about a 10 to 15 minute walk through some serious heat and humidity, something I'll have to get use to! Luckily for us we were shown a way to pretty much walk the entire distance underground, I never realised you could traverse so much of Sydney's CBD underground! Anyway we got to the new building, signed in and headed upstairs to the cafe/lunch floor to meet up with the guys that would be my immediate contact through my first rotation, again, nice people and seemed really excited to have us grads coming to join them.
Anyway long story short, left these guys and headed down with grad guy to grab a beer along the harbour, tried to catch up with some of the other grads but they had to catch planes home. We chatted a bit about our lives and the whole grad process thing and how we really think we are going to enjoy working where we are going. I then left after two drinks (feeling quite drunk!) and headed to grab my gear and get home to Melbourne.
And that is that, I think you can tell I am excited about where things are headed, I've never really had a feeling like this before and it is a little frightening. Usually good things fall away from me! Here is hoping the good times keep rolling :)

Sydney Day 2 Part 2: Return of the Boogaloo

Next the other grad from the department I will be working in came up and said hello to me, this guy is from QLD, is my age and is generally a good bloke. I'm glad I'm starting with this guy as we have a little bit in common and he wasn't instantly sizing me up as competition. We then ran into our "grad boss" so to speak, she was pretty friendly and was pleased that I was already looking for places in Sydney (she had got a call from a real estate agent already!). After a short chat we were all ushered into a really really nice looking conference room with amazing views and told what was going to happen for the rest of the day, the first thing off the list was a speech from some high up woman at the corporation. She told us a pretty amazing story of her career and how she had a child when she was 17 and was kicked out of her private high school and disowned by her parents, she then came and worked at this place doing a pretty menial job while she was trying to finish high school and bring up her child, she then left and worked for a small computer business (which ended up becoming very big) and then completed a degree, after that she went on to work for some major international consulting companies and places like Microsoft and then after about 25 years ended back at the company she started at. Her story was really inspiring and I hope I get to run into her again to get some gaps filled in on that story!
Anyway after that and a few icebreaker "games" we started playing this very elaborate game which I won't even go into as it honestly took the guy 30 to 40 minutes to explain how to play, it was a lot of fun in the end although me and my partner almost came last :) Which for some reason he was really concerned about! I also met one of astro's old workmates during the game which was took me by complete surprise! She seemed lovely and hopefully I'll run into her again soon, be nice if we actually got to know more than a handful of people in Sydney.
After that was a pretty lavish BBQ lunch, I was starving since I hadn't eaten anything all morning so I stuffed myself, I sat down with a few new people and listened to their stories, they had no idea what to expect from their graduate job and I didn't really either! Next up was a Q & A panel with graduates who were completing their grad program, some of what they said was pretty interesting but most of it I had already figured out from months and months of intense Internet research :P They all really seemed to have enjoyed what they had done and have no regrets, although two of them couldn't figure out how to use a microphone properly, when they spoke nobody could hear them, lucky I was seated right up the front.
After this just we all got separated to hang with our department head(s), me and other grad guy went downstairs and grabbed a coffee/water and waited for our grad lady to show up, when she got there she went through what our first rotations would be, grad guy got to go into a division that is dealing with user interface design for some institutional product they are making and I got a role within the online department doing analysis on how to make their consumer and institutional website better. Hmmm they both sound a little bland when I tell them without giving anything away! Rest assured that I am actually pretty happy with what I'll be doing, it should be interesting, relevant and something that will actually be used. Grad guy and I were both sitting there later saying that we wished we got each others roles, probably because they were outside of what we had done before, throughout the rest of the year I get three more rotations in different areas of the division so that should prove to be pretty interesting.
Ok it is nearly time to go to astros works critsmas partay, the last installment will come later!

Sydney Day 2: Electric Boogaloo

So I wake up extra early in the morning at around 7am due to some construction going on in the building, now I know why my room was so cheap. Anyway, I try to go back to sleep but never really manage it, I get out of bed just before 8am and I feel really really nervous and sick, like I am going to another graduate testing centre or something.

I get in the shower and try and calm myself down, I get out still feeling the same so I have a cup of tea in an effort to wake myself up/calm myself down (dunno how that is suppose to work) and also because I know it is the only thing i'll stomach at the moment. I get dressed, pack up and watch the BBC News all at once (man I love 24/7 news channels). I go downstairs to check out of the room and dump my crap in one of their storage rooms, I walk outside and it is overcast, sunny and hot and humid all at the same time, I think some bush fire had happened the night before or they just had some killer smog this morning, i end up taking it easy walking up the road to where I had to be for my graduate thingy walking behind these people all the way who end up to my surprise going to the same thing I am. I get to the foyer of the building and sign for my little name tag thing and get told to proceed to a floor way up in the building. I go past the security doors which are like train staton turnstile/barrier thingos but have plastic windows that move sort of like windscreen wipers, I thought they were cool. I get in the elevator with the people I must have look like I was stalking, they look at me all shifty like, they other workers in the elevator are in casual clothes because it is Friday, I suddenly feel overdressed and like a kids who is going to school for the first day and has all shiny new clothes or something.

I get out of the elevator and routed into this beautiful room with food and breakfasty type things everywhere, I want to eat but for some reason I am drawn immediately to the balcony outside where a majority of the graduates are all mingling. The view is stunning, even with the smog/bushfire this building has some of the best views running south to west of the city over darling harbour. I start looking around for the other sole grad that is suppose to be starting in my division with me, my division has the smallest intake of grads (2) in the entire corporation, which is followed closely by the legal department with 3, most other departments have at least 20 to 30+. Some people jump out of the crowd and remember me from one of the graduate assessment centres, they then acost me for my story about how I got to be in department "A" when I was at the assessment centre for department "B", they listen and are shocked that I was offered two positions and was allowed to choose between the two, I felt very lucky and also a bit embarassed telling the story. One of the guys was telling me his story about how he really wanted to get into the division I was in (we'll call that "A") but didn't and then got offered a job in the other division ("B"), I later found out that day from my manager that he got offered that divison ("B") in the end only because I chose not to take the B offer and took A. I felt embarassed again but also happy that my choice directly helped a person I knew get a job he really wanted! Huzzah!

Ok later I'll continue this story....

sydney day 1 cont

After the BLT I headed back down to where the last property was as the next place I was looking at was only a few doors down. This place was dodgy looking on the outside and also inside where it had a dodgy lift and then also two fire escape doors you had to go through to get to the flat. But once you got there it was pretty nice although a little pokey for a two bedroom, also a little far for both of us to walk to where we want to go. Left that place headed back down towards my last appointment this place was pretty nice too very much like the other place I looked at on missenden rd however it wasn't as nicely laid out and didn't have the facilities of the last place, quite noisy on the balcony and also $50 a week more expensive!

After this I jetted back to the city on the busssssss and checked out the hotel, consdiering how much I paid for the place I was expecting something pretty crap but man, this place was awesome! Everything was new and it was like a full little furnished apartment, the noise level outside sucked a little when I went to bed at night but nothing that wasn't fixed when you turned the aircon on to drown it out. So I went to bed that night totally knackered and with extremely sore feet/toes not before being in the phone a lot of the night trying to sort out applying for a place and talking to my mum.

Anyway, later comes day 2...

sydney day 1

So how was my time in Sydney? Well things did go so well at the beginning due to me missing my flight, I had to pay an extra $50 to get a seat on the next flight which I was pretty happy about as I thought i'd have to buy a new ticket completely.So I ended up getting a flight that left 45 minutes later than my first flight but got to Sydney only 20 minutes later than what was scheduled for the flight that I missed. Got out of the airport quickly and because I was running behind time I went straight to my first inspection appointment near macdonaldtown station. The place was alright, a bit pokey right next to a roundabout which was on a road which is parallel to a main road so I noticed quite a few hoons/tradesmen barrelling down the road so I thought I'd give it a miss, nice little area around macdonaldtown station, if you just like a residential area with a shitload of terrace houses and narrow streets, but very green and pretty quiet for an inner city suburb.Next I went to the city to find my hotel, missed the big IR rally that went down the street, had some food at KFC because I was starving, FYI the KFC on George Street is terrible, I even had it on the way home and it was pretty bad, both burgers had these tiny bits of chicken in it that filled up maybe half the roll. Found my hotel couldn't book in cause I was too ealy, dumped my stuff there and headed out to Missenden Road for my next appointment. Walked through Newton and King Street/Missenden Road area, really nice vibe there, I hadn't seen RPA or Sydney University before but from what I saw on those roads it looks beautiful, saw the place on Missenden Road and you've probably all heard from astro this was the place we got accepted for, it was really nice (although possibly small) and has all this other great crap in the building and is in a really great position for both of us with my work being about 15 minutes away by bus and astro being right next to the uni, also it has a Nando's across the road, guess who is gonna get hella fat?After seeing that place and feeling better about the types of places that were available in Sydney I hung out in nando's filling in rental applications and waiting for my next appointment, it was pretty hot and humid outside even though it was only 25 degrees or something. I then high tailed it back to the real estate agent as I got off the phone with astro and decided to apply for that place, I then jetted off to find the next place to see which was in glebe.So yeah I walked around for ages trying to find this place, up and down this really hilly long street trying to find number 477, however after walking up and down the street i realised that number didn't exist and at the exact time I realised this I looked up and realised I was out the front of the place I was suppose to be looking at, which was good cause the inspection time was in 1 minute.This place was ok, 2 bedrooms, up and downstairs with a courtyard and balcony etc, it was a bit of a walk for both astro and i so i put it on the backburner in my mind, the guy i was dealing with for this property was an absolute tool, but i guess you get that from a 20 year old real estate agent (who looked 16).Next I was stuffed from walking around in business clothes and my leather shoes (they were killing my feet) so I headed into annadale village to find some eats and rest. I found this place where I got a BLT w/cheese and OMG it was the best BLT I had ever eaten, it even had a great side salad of carrot and mixed lettuce that i was chomping down on at lightspeed, so good, I'm thinking about when I am going to eat one again right now.

More later, need to go get ready for work.