Episode I: The Humid Menace

Well I'm back. While I was in Melbourne I wrote a post for each day, but since I had no internet access I didn't post them up. But now that I do, I'm gonna start slowly posting them up one day at a time, and by staggering the posts a bit, I don't have to think about anything to blog about for the next few days. Until Sunday night anyway, after I hit the Big Day Out. Well, here we go...

[insert time warp effect here]

Written Friday, 11 January 2008, 2:34am local time

Day 1: Well, here I am in Melbourne. After about 3 hours sleep, the airport transfer bus arrived at my place at about 4:50am - 10 minutes earlier than they were supposed to. In my rush I managed to grab everything and leave without really causing a delay. Got to the airport, checked in, bought something to eat for breakfast (airport food is expensive) and waited a bit for the plane to arrive. I managed to get to the front of the queue and was first to board the plane, which was really cool - I was on a Jetstar flight, and Jetstar happen to be sponsors of the Gold Coast Titans, and the exterior of the plane was decorated accordingly. Managed to fall asleep for about an hour on the plane after a bit of reading.

How cool do the Titans decorations look?

Arrived with no problem, got picked up by Raffy at the airport and we drove through the city and to his place. I freaked out when I saw a tram on the road, sharing it with other cars - I hadn't noticed the tracks and lines above. I always assumed that all trams had their own dedicated sections of road but here they shared the road with the cars. The weather was extremely hot and humid, I think it hit a top of 41 degrees today, everything felt hot and sticky, and it appeared to overwhelm the air conditioning in Raffy's car. Anyway we spent most of the day with him showing me some random places, most places that he actually needed to go to - went to Monash Medical Centre and Monash University (had lunch at the campus cafeteria, and got a photo in front of the Engineering block... as you do), visited a couple of shopping centres (though spent a bit of time looking at digital SLR camera related stuff at Chadstone shopping centre), and pretty much anywhere else we could find air conditioning. In the evening, we went to St Kilda beach to have dinner with one of his friends and ended up bumming around on a jetty at the beach lazing around and chatting away. Saw penguins living around the rocks beside the jetty, which was cool. It was really weird, as it was so late time-wise, yet the sky was still light.

Engineering Building... Do I have issues?

At about 11:30pm we drove into the city, spent a while driving around for a car park, and after finally spotting one not too far away proceeded to check in at the hotel. Location is perfect, very very close to Southern Cross train station and the Crown Casino. The room itself isn't too bad for about $80 a night, it has a queen size and single bed, even though I'm the only one staying here (it was the only one available). TV with a few foxtel channels too. No kitchen though, not that its really a big deal. Ruins my plans to eat a lot of two minute noodles, though I could get the cup variety as there is a kettle. Importantly though, it has air conditioning.

My room - note the two beds.

Budgeting is going good. I can really only afford to spend up to roughly $80 a day, and today cost me less than $35 - all food and drink expenses. Tomorrow should be more than that, as I'll need to pay if I want to go up Eureka and Rialto Towers, which I do.

Anyway that's enough from me for now, I need to get some sleep. The plan for tomorrow is to explore the city. Can't wait.