Glasses, Zombies and Lara the digi-person...Week 1 in Perth

To say that this first week has been eventful would be a terrible injustice to the term. Strict evidence that your parents do a little more than nag and moan; but I won’t tell them that.
The flight itself, in contrast to everything else, was rather uneventful. A few moments when it felt more like a stint at sea than a flight; but that be forgiven as the flight path was directly through the heart of the Pacific Ocean storms that devastated Samoa.
In flight entertainment provided many a laugh with recent hit film ‘The Hangover’ doing most the work. The passengers sat around me also found out what a hilarious film it is as I often forgot that although headphones stop you from hearing yourself laugh; it does little for anyone else. However a few stern looks over at me and the odd turning head soon made me realise my error.
The flight stop over was in Hong Kong. From the airport you can see the magnificent City with its montage of skyscrapers filling the overcast skyline. The airport itself is amazing with a tube train taking you to departure gates every few minutes. After admiring the city skyline I also observed that everyone in Hong Kong wears glasses, (I assume they were all from Hong Kong or surrounding places, apologies for being unable to tell the difference, black hair and slanted eyes leave little to differentiate.) It was very strange and is something Specsavers may want to look into; a Hong Kong base could be a good investment.
Next stop was Perth which came and went in a few blinks as I finally managed to get to sleep. I was woken only twice, both times for food, which was devoured before I returned to sleep. Hard life.
A downside of travelling to Australia is the hassle of declaring goods at customs. Foreign soil and food being a few things off of the forbidden list. All this kafuffle makes for a major delay, all a bit too much after 20 hours of travelling. Not to mention the amount of times the cue at customs was held up by a Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Polynesian person who had failed to do anything they were meant to have by the time they reached the front. This honestly isn’t a racist attack on the Far East, merely an observation; and an irritating one at that.
So after declaring sports shoes, collecting luggage and squeezing my way through customs it was straight to bed for a well needed sleep. I forced myself out of bed at a reasonable time (9ish) to avoid sending my body clock doo-lally amidst all the changing time zones and the fact that my body still thought it was 2am.
Next stop was the estate agent to collect keys and sign three rainforests worth of paperwork which all pretty much gave the message of ‘if you break it, you pay for it.’ The house seemed really nice at first but we were soon reminded that we were not alone after a quick glance into the fridge, lovely. Apart from that it is nice, exactly as I imagine student accommodation to be like at University.
House mates came and went throughout the day with the odd, ‘Hello’ or ‘G’day’ as they passed. Not all friendly though as one of the zombie girls on our floor proved. She did manage a grunt as she gormed her way past in a zombie like manor back to her room. The challenge to us is to try and make her smile by the time we leave, but I fear if this is achieved, there is a strong chance that hell will freeze over and the world would end.
I have done a bit of shopping in the past, usually for bread and milk, maybe some eggs as well. But never have I done a full food shop. This all led to our supermarket trip being an absolute nightmare but hilarious at the same time. We did buy essentials though; baked beans, pasta, rice, cereal and milk. Adventurous I know.
That evening we went to our first Squad training session which went well; realised how professional everything is over here. But there was a downside to it; we were served food after training, bit of chicken and lasagne. I was reminded of this meal the next morning; more than once which led to a day in bed. Not ideal.
When my stomach cleared up and I was able to venture outside the house without having to dart back to the bathroom it was game time. To cut a long story short we lost having scored 220 in our innings, 48 of which were scored by me, before a mixture of a day in bed and the heat (which to me was pretty warm but the locals were wearing jumpers and skins) got to me and I gifted my wicket away.
A quiet few days followed the cricket before we tackled the next task of internet and mobile phones. If I’d have known this meant 5 hours in a Vodafone shop and 2 hours on the phone to Lara the digital woman on the helpline, I would have thought twice. She struggled to understand ‘I want to speak to a f***ing human’ and just asked me to repeat it. Science is NOT all progress.
After 2 days of throwing things and swearing to avoid completely losing it, we finally got a connection. Hallelujah.
Thursday saw us embark on what proved to be a pretty pointless trip to the city in search of a tax file number. It wasn’t pointless in terms of finding it, this we did but pointless because we could quite easily have sorted it on the internet we spent 2 days stressing over. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
So with tax file numbers gained and internet working all that is left is to find a job. The reluctant search is a task for next week.
I’ll try and update every week....Ciao for now...x