EIGHT DAYS

Oh my god y'all.  Every time I think about it I make little fists and squeeze my eyes shut and do that nngghghhhhyygghg noise because I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT MOVING.  

Let me count the ways.

1. The dishwasher.  Once upon a time, when I was an idiot who didn't know better, I used to complain about emptying the dishwasher.  Nevermore.  I love our dishwasher already and we haven't even been introduced properly.

2. The lovely little balcony with a nice aspect over the rooftops of inner-Eastern Sydney.  Our current apartment on the North Shore has a leafy view, but the balcony is filled with potted plants, kitty litter boxes and all sorts of other claptrap that belongs to Dan's mum and we can't get rid of it, which means we almost never sit out there.

3. The polished concrete floors.  So minimalist, so bauhaus, form und funktion, etc.  Mostly they'll just be easy as shit to keep clean.

4. The walls that I am going to paint.  Presently a dull kind of beige, which, with the chocolate brown kitchen cabinets (would not be my first choice but beh) makes the whole place a little beigey themed.  Walls are gonna be white.  Except for the bathroom which I am going to paint a dark gunmetal grey because I'm hopelessly on-trend.  The vision is kind of like this:

Except about 1/8th the size.

5. The new dining table that we just collected from a junk store in the greater Illawarra.  We bought a dining table for the princely sum of $50 while we were camping near Thirroul over last weekend.  We left it there for the week while we tried to figure out a way to get it back to Sydney, since it wasn't going to fit into our small hatchback.  Turns out it would just fit into the back of my parents' Volkswagen Golf (a surprisingly roomy vehicle), so we drove down this morning to pick it up.  It's not in altogether terrible condition - just needs a good wash and a full-body rub with some beeswax.  Will get some progress shots together!

I absolutely cannot wait.  Work is going to be rough until then as well, so it's excellent to have the apartment (and associated moving-related days off) to look forward to.  The client that I'm on has taken up all the time that I previously had free at work, spreading its little tendrils through my firm's booking system and chewing through hours like nothing else.  It's going to be a fascinating, fascinating week -  a household name client with a shitload of stuff happening in the media, so it's been great to be on the inside of some of it.  But my hours are going to be punishing, both now, and after June year-end.

Moving Treats

There is now a little corner of our present living room that looks like this:

The KitchenAid was my birthday gift, way back in February, from my parents.  It's stood more or less unopened since then, because I decided that it deserved a proper, ceremonial unveiling in a brand new apartment and I desperately didn't want it to get dirty in our current kitchen (which I dislike intensely and which is impossible to clean)

The TV is Dan's.  I say that, because were it up to me I wouldn't even have a television in the new place, let alone one that cost waaaaaay more than I would be willing to pay for a television.  Anyway, JB HiFi were doing 10% off televisions over the weekend and the man took another 5% off the advertised price anyway, so I suppose it could have been far worse.  So that's Dan's shiny box that's also waiting for its proper ceremonial unveiling.  I think we're both equally excited.

Front loading victory

Whee, the washing machine has been purchased and scheduled for delivery on June 29!

We ended up going with this entry-level Bosch, from Appliances Online:

I was pretty certain I wanted a Bosch front loader washer after Choice Magazine rated them 3rd best in their testing.  Only Miele and Asko rated higher, and both their ranges go for $1,300+ which is way over what I was hoping to spend.  The Bosch washer retails for about $700, but Appliances Online was doing it for $577 with free delivery and installation.  Easily the best deal out there.  I tried to play hard ball with a couple of brick-and-mortar retailers, but Bing Lee quoted $570 + $45 delivery, and the man at The Good Guys looked incredulous when I asked if he could price match.  As I found out when I bought my Canon DSLR, you can't just go around in circles until you get it for free.

I can't say washing machines are a very exciting purchase, but the heaving piece of shit in our current apartment has me pretty stoked to be able to wash my clothes without them coming out smelling like ass half the time.  

In slightly ghetto redecorating news, I've decided that I'd like an ottoman for the new place, preferably with storage and preferably upholstered in some kind of trendy fabric.  I'm unwilling to fork out the cash necessary for this though, so Dan came up with a genius idea that I would desperately like to try straight away tomorrow.

This ugly-ass mofo retails for $17.99 at Officeworks:

Covered in nasty PVC, no doubt.  I'm going to find some sexy printed fabric and re-upholster that baby with a staple gun!  I'm picturing something orange/yellowish, possibly vaguely geometrical.  Like this:

Aww, yeah.

Want ALL the things!

So, the status with the house is that the bank is ready to settle, the lawyers are lining up on the starting blocks and we're waiting for the First Home Owner Grant.  True to my style, we had to sign all our documents twice because we signed them the first time in green pen (apparently a no-no, and something I should remember from law school?).  Also had to spend three days getting all sorts of additional documents photocopied and certified, because we didn't realise they were necessary.

I'm unable to get anything right the goddamn first time, is the lesson to be learned here.

Hopefully the wheels are, at last, set irreversibly in motion and come the 25th, we'll be feverishly painting the place.

Today I have an exam (Financial Accounting 1) that I am desperately understudied for.  Something about full-time work just doesn't make me want to come home and jump into the books.  I have no idea how I'm going to cope once it gets more challenging than Financial Accounting 1.

So! Instead, I'm triangulating the size of the fridge in the new place, using the shitty real-estate agent floor plan, the pictures from the online ad for the place, and the fact that I recognise an 86cm high FAKTUM cabinet from Ikea when I see one.  I've deduced that the fridge currently in there is this incredibly inconveniently sized LG number - 

It has the misfortune of being very tall (1700ish mm) and very narrow, and there are cabinets above it, so we're pretty much going to have to find something exactly that size.  I've not decided what, yet, but I should probably get onto that if we want to have a fridge at some point in the next six months.

Help, I'm drowning in Etsy!

The combination of Etsy and one-click Paypal purchasing is a dangerous one, Internet.  I basically did absolutely nothing at work yesterday, except for browsing unusual and interesting homewares.

I ended up getting this cushion cover, mostly because I just kept clicking 'next' on the purchasing screens and there was nobody to tell me to stop (I think I need adult supervision sometimes...):

It's a tea-towel from the 1967 Montréal World's Fair, recycled into a cushion cover.  The colours aren't necessarily in whatever scheme we're going to have going at the apartment, but I liked the Montréal connection and the hipster in me can't resist something old and weird turned into something new.

Today, Dan and I drove up to The Entrance to pick up a kitchen knife that we'd forgotten up there when we stayed over Easter.  It was a relatively expensive knife so it was worth the hour-and-a-half round trip.  The Entrance is full of weird junk stores, so we stopped into a few of them to see if there was anything worth picking up.  I found a little ceramic inkpot from the 1800s that I would have liked, but I ended up leaving it behind because there's only so many ceramic and glass decorative objects you can have in one tiny apartment and I already have way too many.  Plus, when I moved into our current place I rapidly boxed up all his Mum's china figurines and Swarovski animals and declared I would not live in a house filled with pointless ceramic shit.

Now for a night on the couch.  After a week working in Melbourne and an overnight trip to Brisbane for the same client over the last two weeks, I'm stoked just to be home.

A list of bridges that I will never again set foot upon.

I am terrified of bridges.  There, I said it.   And there's a special place in my cold, dead heart for the following  structures in particular...

1. The Jacques Cartier Bridge, Montreal

If you've ever been to Quebec, you'll know that most of their infrastructure is held together with sticky tape and Clag glue.  Overpasses are literally stapled together and held up with chicken wire, while roof collapses are basically a weekly occurence. So it's no surprise that the beautiful Jacques Cartier Bridge (designer of Eiffel Tower fame) is the diciest structure on the planet.  The whole thing jiggles like the San Andreas fault every time a semi-trailer drives over it.  I made the mistake of walking across it once and declared never again, after I more or less ended up crawling on all fours along the pedestrian walkway, hoping to god that the floor wouldn't give way.

2. The Brooklyn Bridge, New York City.

I don't care that it's stood faithfully since time immemorial.  I don't care that they used revolutionary building methods to sink its foundations metres into the murky bottom of the Hudson.  The pedestrian walkway is made of wooden boards, and you can see your swirling doom right underfoot as you walk.  As far as I'm concerned, it's a death trap and I shan't go near it again.

3. The Westgate Bridge, Melbourne

This beast is the worst of them all.  It snuck up on me this afternoon as I drove, blissfully unaware, into Melbourne and before I knew it, it was looming up ahead.  Not only does it look terrifyingly under-engineered and minimalist, do you see how it slopes horribly upwards? This is so when you're driving on it you feel like any second you'll just reach the end of the roadway and tumble down into the river below.  There's also no pedestrian walkway and those assholes have fenced the sides with what is essentially chicken wire, so you can see with absolute clarity the abyss that's roughly twenty centimetres to the left of your vehicle.  Never again.

I love bridges as engineering marvels, as innovative feats of design and architecture, and I freaking love looking at pictures of them.  I would dearly love to visit the Oresund Bridge and the Milau Viaduct, but (and particularly with the Milau), I just know that I'll wet myself with fear at the same time.  I'll leave you with a photograph of my Everest...

Holy shit.

We bought an apartment!

It was actually the first place we looked at, and after walking through about twelve properties there were two that we could actually see ourselves living in.  The first one, a two-bedder, ended up going at Auction for about $60k over our maximum budget (and about $90k over what we paid for this place).  The second one was this one.  It's in a large-ish block and has everything we had to have in an apartment (balcony, nice aspect) and a few things we decided were 'nice to have' (rooftop with swimming pool, heyooooo).

So, now the bank owns both our asses.  Settlement on 25 June!

On redecorating other peoples' apartments on realestate.com.au

Hello again, universe.  

I kind of regret not chronicling my travels on here, especially since I lost all my photographs from that trip (see post below regarding new DSLR camera for cruel, ironic juxtaposition), so I'm going to at least try to chronicle other (slightly) interesting things in my life from here on.

So.  Work. Both sucks and is kind of awesome.  On one hand, I love the higher-level stuff I get to do.  I love looking at the financials of some of the world's biggest companies, figuring out why they've changed, talking about elements of their business, and being taught by some incredibly bright people.

On the other hand, the small stuff really sucks.  Really.  Sifting through boxes of invoices to make sure that they match, looking at 90,000 line spreadsheets that I (mostly) don't understand, that sort of thing.  It's enough to make you want to tear your eyes out.  Especially when, like the client this week, their filing system is prehistoric.

Other than that, Dan and I might have almost maybe kind of bought an apartment.  It feels a million miles away still, especially because we're waiting on final loan approval and I've spent the last week of my life obsessing about things going wrong, wondering if we've picked the right one, fretting about strata levies, lather, rinse, repeat.  Anyway, it's a shoebox. A teeny, tiny shoebox but it's walking distance from my office, it's on the top floor of the building and has beautiful district views over inner eastern Sydney, so it doesn't feel cramped.

I've restarted my Pinterest account (http://pinterest.com/luiiiiisa/), and I've been feverishly pinning all sorts of things I might like to put into this apartment which not only is not even ours yet, but is also going to put us significantly into debt, so what the fuck am I doing pinning an Eames Sofa Lounge onto my Pinterest (RRP Eleventy Million Dollars).

Anyway, if this all goes to plan I might have some news around Monday/Tuesday.  Also I have training all week next week, then I'm heading to Melbourne for work for a week.  Here's to a cruisy few weeks.

On being Au Fait with it all.

As my leaving date draws near, more and more people (mostly at work) keep asking whether I'm excited/ready/scared/nervous/packed/etc. The answer to all of those questions has been to shrug my shoulders and say not really.. I've barely thought about it. Which is true - While I've never traveled for five months before, I've certainly done my fair share of various types of trips and so I've just been fairly unconcerned by it all. Experience has taught me that when it comes to travel, no matter what, I'll be able to find a place to sleep, and no matter what, shit will (mostly) be okay.

So I've been fairly unconcerned about the upcoming trip, to the point where towards the end of this week when the questioning has slowly reached a peak, I became mildly concerned about my lack of concern.

I had my last cello lesson and theory class this evening and at the end of the lesson, had to return to my teacher the cello I had borrowed, because I won't see her 'til the end of January. As the class drew to a close, I found myself gripping its neck like a child, growing more and more uneasy at the prospect of having to hand the instrument back. As the others gathered their things, I slowly put the cello in its case and took it back into the practice room to place it in a corner. I walked out and my cello teacher hugged me, making me promise to keep in touch, and promise to send her photos when I visit her native Vermont.

And I lost it. Bawling in front of my teacher and five semi-strangers. There's the pre-travel neurosis I know and love.

I'm the worst.

A couple of years ago before an overseas trip, I was whining about my crappy iPod earphones and Dan offered to lend me his brand-new expensive earbud things. Walking down the street in Paris a few weeks later and one of them just stopped working. Absolutely and completely, and refused ever to work again. I think it was because he'd been winding them tightly around his iPod for weeks prior, breaking the little wire inside, but I still felt terrible that it had happened on my watch.

Early last year, he got a Kindle (his sister got it for free, but that's beside the point). He lent it to me on a sort of extended loan earlier this year, and I was planning on taking it to Canada in four weeks.

That is, until I sat on it ten minutes ago and now that fancy pancy screen has a bleed. I am the absolute worst person ever. I have already bought him a new Kindle online (I didn't replace the earphones, but this..), but I feel completely dreadful. He made me a roast chicken and some leek soup for lunch today, and what did I do? I sat my fat ass down on his Kindle.

Adventures in DIY

So, more or less because I couldn't find something that I liked at the negligible price I wanted to pay, I have made myself a camera bag. Being a girl, I carry a handbag constantly. It's usually a massive one too, so the last thing I wanted was one of those twerpy black, faux leather camera bags. Apart from the fact that they look dreadful, the last thing I want is yet another bag (in a perfect leave-it-in-the-restrooms size) to carry while traveling.

So I made myself something in a minimal size with no bells, whistles, zips or extra pouches that I can slip into whatever bag I'm already carrying. I don't know that I necessarily would have known how to make something with bells, whistles, etc. either, but let's pretend it was an option.

So, here are the results of my attempt!

Velcro close, with down padding inside. I did not make the down padding. That is a level of skill I dare not approach. It actually comes from a couple of old dolls' pillows and a doll blanket that my Mother made for me when I was about seven. It had all been gathering dust so I decided to put it to good use. The covering fabric was stuff I had at home, meant for a (increasingly ill-fated) DIY chair re-upholstering that I keep planning to do.

Best of all, I didn't even spend a cent.

The plunge. I have taken it.

After numerous rounds of negotiations involving most camera retailers this side of Hong Kong, I have bought myself a brand-new camera.

I had been looking for a reason to justify the purchase of a new toy for a little while, because my gutsy little point-and-shoot just ain't cutting it anymore. The justification came perfectly packaged in the form of a suggestion from my Cello teacher that I visit her home state of Vermont during the Fall, while I'm in Montreal. A couple of quiet days at work gave me the opportunity to do some research (See, eg.) and I quickly decided that this was a side-trip I needed to make. Not only that, but the leaves! They needed to be PHOTOGRAPHED! Lest, I dunno, the seventy billion photographs that already exist on Flickr vanish somehow.

And so I spent the following set of quiet days at work telephoning camera retailers, trying to make them all undercut each other in the hopes that eventually I would end up with a free camera.

Needless to say that didn't happen. But I did get the Canon 1100D with 18-55 IS lens from Paxtons in Chatswood for $639.

Mostly I just want to take the Tax Invoice to Bing Lee, who were sizzling the obsolete 1000D for $800 and I want to wave it in their faces.

Reddit user arbores, on ads for The Olive Garden:

I particularly hate the ones that feature the group of young, upwardly mobile, improbably-racially-diverse friends playfully thrusting their forks at one another's plates and happily sharing food. They bear very little resemblance to the mouth-breathing hominids you'd actually find within the stuccoed confines of such a craptastic eatery.

|Link|

Things I have been doing.

One of the lawyers has a hearing at the Supreme Court this week, so last week was lost to feverish preparations. In what I believe is my personal best, I photocopied approximately 10,000 pages over the course of the week.

Ah, such is the glamorous life of a paralegal.

Friday evening I bailed as quickly as my hot little legs could carry me and took myself, along with a group of friends, to Stitch, Since I Left You and The Foxhole. These are all bars, apparently. I am full of nothing but praise, though, because after dealing with horrendous Sydney nightlife, the change in licensing laws and the increased availability of cheap liquor licenses means that small places like those I just listed have been able to open.

The following morning Dan and I caught a train back into the city and walked down westwards from Wynyard to near the KPMG and Macquarie buildings, meandering past the maligned Barangaroo site over to Walsh Bay. We had lunch at Cafe Sopra before pawing through the didgeridoos and boomerangs at the Rocks market back towards Wynyard. I had never walked around to Walsh Bay from the western side before and I was taken aback at how beautiful it was, with big sandstone cliff-faces drilled right down into the side of the city.

Saturday evening we watched the rugby at the Coopers in Newtown, and Sunday I spent with my Grandmother, Dad and Sister, walking from North Curl Curl Beach to Dee Why over the headland.

A lovely weekend.

A list of people and entities with which I have battled in the last 24 hours.

• Canon IR2520I multifunction printer
• LEAP Documents 2003
• Mental arithmetic
• Nadi from Virgin Mobile
• Two-ring binder
• Olympus DSS Transcription Module
• My ankles

I declared victory over a few (Virgin Mobile, the printer) and conceded defeat to others (my ankles).

It's over, O-V-A-H.

On Tuesday 14 June 2011 I finished law school.*

And then I promptly joined the rest of my classmates over the road at the pub where we all got absolutely, fabulously, horrifyingly drunk. I feel we deserved it for the most part.

I had a couple of days of sweet freedom, and now I'm back at work at the lawjob, full-time until I go overseas. I quit the lawjob last week (in anticipation of travels and the new Big4 job), but the boss didn't actually tell anyone else, so it was left to me to have awkward conversations behind awkward closed doors with individual co-workers. The number of them who didn't seem at all surprised alarmed me a little, because while the suburban law firm was never hugely part of my long-term life plan, I honestly do love it there.

Six weeks to go! Also I bought this today:

It is a scarf with zebras all over it and I'm kind of in love with it. I've been sporting it as a turban all afternoon, for better or worse.

*Unless I failed something, like Intellectual Property, which is entirely likely since we have received exactly zero feedback on the assessment units for the subject and thus I have no idea how I went over the entire semester. Dear Jesus and Tom Cruise please don't let me have failed.

Woooooo.

Oh egads. I booked my flights today!

Departing Sydney for Vancouver on 21 August, over to Montreal a week later, three months in Montreal, then Vienna, Eastern Europe and finally home on Christmas Eve. All in all, its almost exactly four months.

First World Problems

Having forgotten my phone at Dan's on Monday morning, I faced three days of phonelessness with optimism and good humour.

It'll be liberating! No pesky telephone calls! If people want to meet up, we'll actually have to make PLANS! What a hark back to the halcyon days! Maybe this evening I'll gather my family 'round the wireless for an evening's entertainment!

It was not like that. Not like that at all. The amount of time I have wasted over the last two days is astronomical. Waiting at bus stops (Where before I could call for a lift home), attending an already cancelled cello lesson (She tried to reach me), missing out on lunch dates (because nobody could get hold of me).

Not having a phone is a curse. Not having a smartphone is an even worse curse. I felt absolutely ridiculous this evening, stranded at the bus stop for 45 minutes with a laptop, a Kindle and an iPod, but absolutely unable to help myself.

I got a cab home. I am so ashamed.

Me and my pets.

I open my diary and the two Jabba the Hutts living therein belch loudly, leaving trails of mucous and sticking the pages together. Comfortably housed within the diary covers, the Jabbas leer at me from May 13 knowing full well that no matter how much I ignore them, we will eventually come face-to-face.

Oh yes, Intellectual Property, I will vanquish those assignments. Your sweaty twin Jabba the Hutts.

Seven is the number of assessable items I have left at law school - six, if you don't count the participation mark for Advocacy. After three years, that's almost countable on one hand. This time three years ago I had almost finished an Economics degree and couldn't possibly have imagined what would come next.

I'd love to sound all glowing and rosy-cheeked about my last few weeks of law school, about clutching books to my breast and just soaking up all that learning, but that would be a lie. I have never been less dedicated, less willing to be there, than over the last ten weeks. A lot of it comes with having a job lined up, but I'm also just over it. It's time to be a real person now.

Not feeling it.

I had a cello lesson this morning which went better than expected because I had forgotten that I had done some practice and I am my teacher's baby's second-favourite student so every week comes with bonus squeezing and a chewed-up library card.

But then the remainder of the day bordered on ruination. I went in to class, which was a waste of time. We worked on an assignment (drafting a Will for a made-up client), for which I had already printed a precedent at work. I made plans to meet a friend for lunch, who stopped returning calls and text messages between 11.00am and 7.00pm, leaving me to fume in ineffectual rage between 11.00am and 7.00pm while simultaneously being terrified she'd fallen off a cliff.

Anyway, I'm determined that this evening won't be a waste. I've practiced cello and now I'm off to tutor my Year 12 Economics kiddie. I will do my Intellectual Property assignment this evening. I will.