Phew! It is very warm outside and is likely to remain so for the weekend. This is, after all, what summers are all about. While the readership may be happily ensconced in the coldest season of the year, the writer is adjusting to February falling in between the Summer Solstice and the Vernal Equinox.

Melbourne, you shall be delighted to learn is lovely. It seems that there is much to see and do here, although we have been focussed on not seeing and doing everything in our first fortnight. The most significant landmark that I have investigated was Albert Park. I took a walk around the lakeside road while K was meeting with her new employers on Tuesday morning. Albert Park is beautiful despite the roadwork(s) that started this week in preparation for 2 April’s major motor sport spectacular. I hope to take some more photographs over the next few weeks to show the preparation that goes into turning the local beauty spot into one of Formula 1’s best circuits.

Inquisitive readers may be interested to know what we have been doing if we haven’t been sightseeing with cameras strapped to our persons. Our concentration has been mostly on finding somewhere to live. As nice as the YHA is, we cannot stay here forever. Firstly I would go insane at their restrictive and expensive Internet access. More importantly, the said hostel is fully booked from 14 March due to Melbourne hosting yet another major sporting event before the Grand Prix: The Commonwealth Games.

Finding potential places to live is easy. Websites like RealEstate.com.au facilitate finding properties that match our requirements and our budget. The agents, themselves, however seem to be trained in preventing people renting their landlords’ flats and houses. When we were letting out the house in Crawley, we found the market to be biased in favour of the tenants. Over here, we’re finding quite the opposite.

Our first encounter with a real estate agent (no fake agents, here!) was terrible. When we stated our requirements and budget, she told us that they didn’t have many cheap properties on their books! We found something that looked like it matched our requirements and filled out a form to view it. After some huffing and puffing, the lady behind the counter asked me for a AU$50 deposit and put the keys to the flat on the counter. I thanked her and asked for some directions: End of the road… turn left!

K and I walked to the end of the road, turned left and consulted the map. Turning right, then left and walking for about 20 minutes in the sun, we arrived at the building. The entrance to the flat was tucked around a corner, but we found that and inspected the flat. They would have needed to pay us to live in it! We took the tram back to the office, to ensure getting back within the hour and retrieving our deposit!

Thankfully our experiences since then have been better. We missed out on a lovely house in a prime location, which was a real shame. Like a couple of other viewings that we have been to, the agents will open the property for fifteen minutes per week and a crowd of about thirty prospective tenants pour in and rush to fill out an application form if the property is to their requirements. How they pick a successful applicant is a bit of a mystery, but on the occasion in question, they picked someone else.

We figured that we would probably stand a better chance of being chosen to pay rent if we put two incomes on the application form instead of just K’s. As such, the search for my next employer began yesterday. There are plenty of positions on Seek that I’m capable of filling and I have spent some time writing to the relevant companies and recruitment agencies to apply for them. As nice as the idea of being a kept man in one of the World’s most beautiful countries is, after a little under two months I found myself itching to start working on software again. Or maybe it’s just the mosquito bites?

I have mentioned to some of you that I have a great idea for a website that I want to create, but in order to launch that I’m going to need money for hardware, bandwidth and the like. So… hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go! Of course if anyone out there knows of any work that would suit me, then I’d be happy to hear from you!

The plan for tomorrow is to take The Beast out for the first time since its arrival in Melbourne and visit a number of potential dwellings. Sunday will be, as the Good Lord intended, a day of rest. Now, though, the weekend has landed so I can leave the applications in the relevant mailboxes and concentrate on drinking cold beer and eating barbecued food.