Monday, February 21, 2011

A place to live! Also I'm sick as a dog :(

(The internet at the hostel really is truly horrible. However, there is free, if somewhat more limited, internet on campus, so multi-post uploads it is! GO BACK DOWN AND CHECK OUT THE POST FROM THE WILDLIFE PARK. You will not regret it! There are lots of pictures. :D)

So I now have essentially secured my housing! This is wonderful for my stress levels. I’ll be staying in the Dianella room I mentioned before just until a room owned by the same landlord in the suburb of Maylands opens up.
The Maylands room is only 4 blocks from the train station (currently I’m 6 blocks from the train, which leaves me drenched in sweat on the hot days), 2 blocks from two different grocery stores, and a block from a park. Perth is only 10 minutes away by train, which it’ll probably only take another 10 to get to the stop off for UWA, and I think I can even stay on the same train to do it. The view is rather lovely, and on the way to the train station there is a chemists, a post office, a salvation army store, and a good handful of restaurants and little pricey clothes etc shops. I guess I’d go for calling it a 3-room apartment; the living room area and kitchen are pretty tiny, but there’s a gas stove and a relatively new washing machine. No dryer; seems as though everyone here uses clothes lines (certainly everyone in my tax bracket anyway). It will come furnished though, with a bed, a table, a chair, and even linens, which is wonderful because I won’t have to either have mine shipped or buy new ones. The room I’m likely to have is a single, quite big enough as it’s about the size of my old room at Max’s, and is currently inhabited by the owner’s son. There’s a rather gross older guy in the double bedroom, which has actually partitioned off to effectively be like two single rooms, only you share the key to the door. Thankfully, the gross old guy is moving out soon (his room smelled terrible D:). There’s another guy in the second single room (who I didn’t get to meet), who I believe is moving out as well. At that point, the son will move into the other single room, as it has a bigger closet, which he needs because his girlfriend sometimes comes to stay over….
The toilet is in a separate room from the shower, and are both shared by all inhabitants. Unfortunately, everything has that grungy feeling you get in places where college boys live. D: If it’s been awhile since you’ve stepped into the lair of the common college boy, I assure you it can really be pretty gruesome. I will not even try to give examples from my days in the dorms; truly, the particular stench of unwashed male body + old take out food + mountain dew or stashed alcohol, all left to marinate whilst playing days of WOW or Starcraft….. It haunts me still. I may have to attack this Maylands apartment with cleaning supplies and incense just for my own sanity.
I think I may still try to see if I can find another decent girl to share the double bedroom with. Since leaving high school, I’ve not really done a good job of making friends with girls; I’ve only a few girl friends at UNM, and I tend to spend more time hanging with boys. Especially after my last roommate fiasco… So this may be a bit of a challenge for me. If I do manage to find a girl I could trust to live in the same room, it would be great; someone to help bring a little more yin to the place and the rent would be $40 cheaper. We’ll see though.
In the meantime, I’ve got O-Day activities (that’s short for Orientation day; and yes, it made me mentally snicker like a 13 year old). For the most part, this seems to be free entertainment, activities, and sometimes food, as well as sign ups for clubs and such, just like first week of term back home. I’m looking forward to trying to meet more people; I’ve felt a bit lonely this weekend.  I’ve spent a lot of time here in the hostel because I’ve felt too tired to do anything with this cough (which only seems to have gotten worse, unfortunately), and I haven’t really made friends here, except for Glen. He’s really nice and gets along with everyone he meets, but I’m still all shy and antisocial. Maybe I’ll meet up with one of my Canadian pals tomorrow… That would probably cheer me up.
Geeze, does *everyone* who goes abroad get sick upon arrival, or is it just me and Isa-chan’s luck?  Bleh.

1 comment:

  1. Hey cutey!

    Dani here, unrelated but important comment for you. Steph got nominated for a TA of the Year Award, and needs a certain number of recommendations from students along with her ones from professors. These are due by March 10.

    She's willing to cut and paste the requirements here (where she knows you come somewhat regularly) if you'd like to write one for her (this would make a Steph very happy!).

    This can prolly be done by either writing, signing, and faxing it....or writing, signing, then scanning it in and emailing it.

    ReplyDelete