sunshine coast

Thursday morning as usual - breakky and then back to looking for work. That was the plan. I am glad however it did not turn out that way - Rebel, house owner asked if I would be interested in going to Sunshine Coast. She had to go there to pick up her daughter and also celebrate the hens night of her friend. Hens night or hens party is the bachelorette party, the last night the future bride to be spends as single. So why not, at least I do not have to pay for going there and an option to get off the computer for a while.

And off we drove. It's just so wrong to be sitting on driver's seat and not having the steering wheel nor the pedals there. :) During the almost 1h drive I got to know some very interesting things about the driving school and the whole system of getting drivers licence (DL). You can apply for DL when 16 years old, same as in Estonia. When learning, you get L-plates (learning), then after a year and min 100hours of driving you get P-plates (provisional), which are either red or green, depending on the years of experience. Nevertheless, you have quite a number of restrictions to cope with, including day and night driving, both are obligatory. To read more about DL - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-plate

Sunshine Coast is about 100km north from Brisbane, a nice place to go to the beach as it's more a quite place while Gold Coast is more energetic, lively. Sunshine Coast consists of three municipalities - Noosa Shire, Maroochy Shire and Caloundra City, first of which is most northern, then Maroochy and just 10km south is Caloundra. This time I did not go and visit the Underwater World marine park in Mooloolaba, town in Maroochy Shire, which has an underwater tunnel through the shark pool, however will do that the next time (http://www.underwaterworld.com.au/), nor the Australia Zoo which was created by the late Steve Irwin, also known as the Crocodile Hunter who passed away in 2006 after being pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while filming in Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

However, I enjoyed it quite a lot, the sun and the beach, a nice meal. Also thought about maybe staying the night ad a backpackers hotel, but still decided the head back to Brisbane in the evening - a 3,5hour trip as it turned out!

Some photos - http://picasaweb.google.com/saksmargus

In Mooloolaba the were quite a few roadblocks and the whole beach area was closed for traffic. As it turned out, they host an important triathlon competition which took place on 25-27 March.

http://www.usmevents.com.au/Triathlon___Multi_Sport/Mooloolaba_Triathlon_Festival/Media___Gallery/Media_Release_-_Australian_trio_firing_for_Mooloolaba.htm

jobhunting

Finding a job is a difficult thing really. You need to go through loads of offers, find out those which would be suitable for you, then apply on those, wait for feedback and hope to get an interview quickly. Fortunately though, here you really have a lot of them to start with. So I have really been onto it since Monday, with some positive feedback already actually Monday morning and although the offer itself was interesting, they offered me an internship which sadly isn't a paid position! They offered me a "leaving home compensation" but that really does not cover the expences here nor does it leave me an option to save. In meanwhile nothing serious till today, where I was asked if I would be able to get to another part of the city within an hour or so, which unfortunately is not the case, so I did not even get to go to meet those guys.

Yet the worst thing here is, everything takes time, a lot of time. I was told about it before but unless you have actually experienced the fact itself, it's hard to understand. So, here I am, and things TAKE TIME! Even to get back to you by email upon an answer to a question takes 2 hours.

Meanwhile, the past 2 days have been sunny and warm, a rough 30 degrees outside :) More than we usually get in the summer back at home. Yet as I do not move around too much these days, I cannot really enjoy it a lot. During the day it makes you swet and it really does somehow not make too much sense to wonder around the city, do sightseeing when money is a subject! So jogging and going for an evening walk is pretty much all I do outside now. Hopefully we'll get the pool ready soon. However, decided to sit outside today a bit, well I managed only about 20 minutes and thought I'd be better off inside, the sun is very intense here!! It is no wonder the Queenslanders are amoung the top of the list in the world when it comes to skin cancer! Each year, nearly 21,000 Queenslanders are diagnosed with cancer and over 7,000 Queenslanders will die of the disease. One in two Queensland men and one in two Queensland women will develop cancer in their lifetime (before the age of 85 years). That is A LOT of cancer here! Moreover, 80% of all cancer in Australia is skin cancer (http://www.cancerqld.org.au/).

Should I go and buy a strong sunscreen soon?! YES! :)

Now fingers crossed everyone, so I'd get employed within this or next week the latest!!

then came the day of moving

It's funny that you have your whole life packed into 2 suitcases and when moving from one place to another, you feel like it's too much. On the other hand, after unpacking everything it looks as if you really forgot something. :)

So on Friday it took me 3 buses and over 1 hour to get to where I am going to be staying, at least for a while. It's a very nice and cozy house with friendly people living here - the owner is a woman in her fourties, then her friend, probably in late thirties and then a hungarian couple who has been living here since the beginning of January, arrived just one day before the flooding began in Brisbane, but who are now packing there things to move a bit closer to city center. In the evening I had a longer chat with them, it turns out they have been in AU since January 2010 and firstly spent a year in Melbourne but then decided to move to a place with better climate. As it turns out, in Melbourne you may have 4 seasons during one day, which can be pretty annoying. He is working in a coffee house as a barista, she is studying still looking for part time work. But it seems they manage pretty well when only one of them actually earning money. Unfortunately it's not sure who will be replacing them.

Tonight I finally had very good night sleep and woke up at about 10.30 with a suprise - it's raining. So the plan of going jogging has to be postponed. On the other hand it leaves me time to take a look at job offers. Just as a back-up and to have an overview what is here available. Probably will send my CV to a number of positions, you never know unless you try right :)

That's the room, small but enough :)

the reality strikes

Here I am, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia where the aussie experience begins! Arrived here on Tuesday after an exhausting 40 hour trip which started when we arrived at Stansted airport in London, well actually a 90min busride away from London Victoria station where we nearby stayed for a few days. London was great, I enjoyed our stay there a lot, I like the city, the feeling of being there. I like that we went there together. :)

At the moment i finished my breakfast in a nice appartment where i am staying for 3 days, just after I had a nice morning swim in the pool which is just outside in the garden. Soon I'll be off to the city, have to get myself a local phonenumber and a bank account. Yesterday i had a short walk in city center with Katrin, the friend who gladly offered me a place to stay for a few days just to get things sorted out.

It looks nice here, the people are very friendly and helpful, you get occasional "hellos" just when walking by of somebody. On our way back we paid a quick visit to a local shop just to get some fresh salad for a light lunch. We didn’t take much but the total amount of approximately 40 dollars just showed how much everything costs here. I also bought myself a go-card which is needed for public transport. The card itself is 5 dollars, but then you need to load money onto it for travelling. Of course you can buy a single ticket, but it costs quite a bit more. It is something similar to what I saw in Amsterdam – you load some money onto the card and pay with it by touching a certain screen when entering any means of public transport. However that isn’t cheap either. Later yesterday I went to see the place I will be moving to on Friday. It’s located in a suburb – Underwood and to get there you either take a train or at least 2 buses. I went with the train and came back with the buses. The whole trip costed me roughly 12 dollars.

What makes moving around even harder is the public transport system itself. It's very controversial - on one hand you see special road systems only for buses, underground terminals, fastways above regular traffic, easy go-card system where yu only pay for the travel yu actually make. But on the other hand the buses usually go twice or trice every hour and they finish their service sometimes even at about 8 pm. Which is EARLY! As I could not get a bus back from the city after a 1 hour long jorney from Underwood, I already thought how on earth people go out here on weekends. Does everybody walk back?! Luckily I remembered that there is also a riverboat that could take me across the river, and as it turned out - the riverboat departs from one river bank to another in every 10 minutes and 24 hours a day. Odd!

I am off to downtown now, hopefully going to get things sorted with the bank account and phone number.

Cheers from sunny, 29 degrees warm Brisbane :)

life's like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get!

it feels quite strange and yet exciting to know that you only have about 9 hours left here where is your home and you will soon find yourself in a totally new, odd, unfamiliar country that you will, at some point, may start to call home aswell. however, to quote forrest gump, you can make plans but as life leads mysterious ways, you'll never know which chocolate you end up getting from the box.
needless to say, i am very anxcious about this whole change in my life. as i already have managed to build up my life in a totally new environment from scratsh, i do not feel i should be scared or frightened about what it yet to come. still, it feels sad, somewhat empty to go away from everything you have got dear to you. i belive the real emotion will strike upon actually arriving to brisbane. let's see, if not more then it will be a great adventure :)

so, the packing is basically finished, just some final things to take care of, passport is valid, tickets have been printed, money has been changed, it seems all set to go. first stop is london where we (me & my dear Doris) will spend a couple of days wondering around, doing sightseeing, annoying a couple of friends and on sunday she will head back to tallinn and i will fly off towards brisbane with stops at kuala lumpur and perth. though the flights will be long and weary, i comfort myself with the fact that i only have about 4 hours between my flights. how hard the whole ordeal shall be, i will eventually find out after landing in brisbane on 15th of march.

and if some you ask why am i writing in english, it's because i am a lazy person and i do not feel like writing the same story twice to make it understandable for my international friends :)

au revoir, bon voyage!