Hi,
It's been a week in Sydney now. Has been going good so far. Rather should I say the bad was as expected. :-)
Work has been pretty hectic. So many things to learn and so many things to be fixed. The biggest issue seems to be able to convince a few people that I can really do what I am talking about.
Apartment hunting...well history repeats itself. :-) The good part though is that I've been through this before so avoiding most of the "mistakes" I did last time. However each city comes with its own quirkiness and that adds to the "entertainment value". Over in Melbourne I could walk into a real estate office and ask for houses that are available and they will either fix an appointment for inspection during the week or hand over the key to me for self-inspection. Over here the challenge is no private appointments and no key giving business. All inspections have to be done on SATURDAY ONLY. Ok...there was one apartment that I could visit during the week, but that was it. Doesn't really help the situation where I need to find a place to stay within 2 weeks. I had already lost a saturday - the day (or night) I arrived in Sydney. So new lesson - if you are relocating to Sydney better arrive on a Thursday / Friday night. :-) I rented a car yesterday to check out the shortlisted apartments. Was able to check out about 8 places of which I liked maybe 1 or 2. As a result of the roaming around I now have a better feel for the suburbs.
Visited a school friend of mine. I met him after almost 15 years. Had dinner at his place. Refreshing to have "normal" food - dosai, thakkaali sambar and uppuma. :-).
This morning started on another "roaming around" session in a different part of Sydney. Glad that I did it because now I've clearly made up my mind on where I need to focus. While I started this morning I missed a turn in spite of the GPS telling me. Probably that was one of my BLINK decisions. ;-) I went around a little bit and went to a cul-de-sac where I could turn around. Voila...THE Opera house was right in front of me. It was interesting because I couldn't get a view of it from far - only when I went to that particular spot. Took a few seconds to take it in and started obeying the GPS. :-)
The best part of the weekend - I stumbled into a Thai restaurant which was simply amazing. It was a small "hole-in-the-wall" kind of a place right next to the hotel I've been staying. I've gone past it every day but never thought of checking it out. I think I will be a regular there. :-)
Oki doki....my laundry should be done now. (Oh btw...the first time I loaded, the machine "worked" for 30 minutes and some of the clothes didn't even get wet!!)
