Friday, October 7, 2011

Arrival of the Father Unit

It's been about five days since my Dad arrived in Melbourne, and it was damn good to see him again. I checked out of my hostel to go meet him at the airport and move to a nicer guest house, taking the airport shuttle. I arrived there about an hour before his flight was due to arrive, and upon grabbing a coffee, got a call from him telling me he missed his connecting flight and wouldn't be getting to Melbourne for another four hours. I caught the shuttle back into the city and checked into the hotel. After a while I headed up to the rooftop patio to enjoy the beautiful weather and make a call to the HR lady at TasRail about my upcoming interview. I walk onto the roof, my face pointed down toward my phone as I'm walking. As I walk around the corner I look to the right and there, sitting on one of the couches, is a woman sunning herself, completely naked as the day she was born. She sees me and blurts out an "Oh my God!". I stand there for a second or two processing how to react to this; she's shocked yet she's sitting on a rooftop with half of downtown Melbourne in big, windowed offices above and around her. I blurt out a half assed apology and walk away smiling from a big breasted introduction to this new hotel.

When Dad shows up he's brought my resupply of Kraft Dinner, which I desperately needed a fix of. KD in Australia sucks, the cheese comes in a tin can and looks like a cross between Cheez Whiz and Jello, and it's gooey as fuck when you mix it in. And he brought me a Canadian Rugby Jersey that I had been searching for here, but unfortunately the medium size in a rugby jersey is anything but medium. Hopefully it will be an easy fix to get a different size. I exchanged some gifts with him as well; a shirt and a hat I bought from Papua New Guinea.

The past few days we've been sightseeing around Melbourne, making good use of the free tourist bus that stops at various tourist locations around the city. We've wandered through the unique cafe-lined narrow alleyways in downtown Melbourne, seen the Botanical Gardens, done some shopping in the Central Market, and wandered around the boring Harbor Town, which turned out to be a giant shopping center. We've been sampling the great food selection that Melbourne has to offer, so far dumplings, Mexican, Greek and Italian food have been some highlights. We've been hoping to go check out the 88th floor skydeck above Melbourne's downtown, but yesterday, the day we wanted to go, turned out to be the haziest day so far, and today isn't much better. Though we do have time. On Tuesday we'll be setting off on a two day tour of the Great Ocean Road, a stretch of highway supposedly scenicly comparable to California's Route 101.

I had my second interview for the train driver job in Tasmania, and it went really well. The people that interviewed me bragged up Tasmania quite well, I'm hoping a move formulated to make me want to stay there. I was told I'll hear back from them by next Thursday at the latest, so until then, my fingers are crossed!

1 comment:

  1. Great stuff Kyle, I was talking with my old man who just got back from Australia for work. He was saying they are looking for tons of workers j u yyyyyy tttt[ h[

    that was little john slivorski who finished the sentence there :P

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