Mon Jan 07 20:29:31 2008
Hunting...
... for flats and jobs
Having arrived in Sydney it's now time to build a new life. Two items are at the top of the agenda: 1) Find a job (either of us would do to start with); 2) Find a flat. There are worse conditions to go job and house hunting in than 25-30C and glorious sunshine. It's the best summer weather I can remember in at least two years (and yes, that does include Melbourne where summer is terrible) though I'm told the locals are complaining about this summer being on the cold side.
Admittedly it does rain a lot too -- on Saturday we got caught no fewer than six times by torrential downpours which inevitably stopped after five minutes (usually just after we'd found some shelter). This fantastic rainbow made up for getting wet on the ferry.
House hunting here works just like in Victoria, basically an inspection (usually lasting 20mins) is scheduled by the agent, and potential tenants all turn up to view the place at the same time, desperately trying to ignore all the other contenders while impressing the agent. It's not first-come-first-served; all applications are taken and the landlord chooses whomever they like the look of best on paper. So far we have not seen anything that we actually want to rent but we're getting to have an idea on which areas we might want to live in. Inevitably this is going to be a compromise between what we can afford and what is nice.
Looking for jobs just requires web access so considering the internet charges in the hotel (see previous blog entry, or should I say "previous rant"?) we sometimes go to the local coffee shop, which has excellent coffee and free internet access. It's all proceeding satisfactorily.
There is only so much scouring of adverts and viewing of flats one can do so we are enjoying the rest of the days as holidays. The ferries are always a major source of fun, even when one doesn't have to go anywhere. We saw these modern sailing dinghies preparing for a race just off Rose Bay. It is rare to see modern sailing boats in Australia and the crew clearly had a great time playing on what for most people was the last day of the Christmas holidays.
I also discovered two major shopping areas, one in the CBD and one at Chatswood. Sydney is much more cosmopolitan than Melbourne, and its shopping centres compare favourably with Paris or Berlin. Of course, so do the prices. Back to job-hunting for me, then.
