So! Dan and I have a home!We've moved to the suburb of Moorooka in the South of Brisbane. The set-up of our home is as follows: Upstairs Dexter and Teresa, the owners of the property, live. Their level of the house consists of 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, lounge, study, dinning room and laundry room. Yup, it's pretty big!
Then on the ground floor of the house (by the way, there are no stairs connecting the upstairs to the downstairs) Dan and I live with our housemate Dave. Each of us have our own room in the downstairs home which consists of 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, lounge and kitchen.
The house is great and a real bargain at $135 (£57 OUCH, what's happening to the £ guys?!) a week. That's inclusive of all utility bills and such.
So now I'm settled and have a permanent home, I actually have a daily routine:
5am: Wake up and get ready for work (no, seriously, I really do get up at 5)
6:15am: Leave home to catch the train into work
7am: Arrive in the Central Business District of Brisbane and grab a fruit-shake
7:30am: Start work
.....
4:30pm: Work over! Head back home on the train
5:30ish pm: Arrive home and promptly settle on one of the sofas and play on the newly acquired X-Box 360 that Dan and I have bought!
10pmish: Collapse in bed and start over!
Can't say I can complain about my weekdays.
Weekends however, well... weekends... I'm not sure I could guess what is going to happen during a weekend even if my life depended on it!
I.E. This week, whilst watching Arsenal whoop Man Utd, a guy we met in a bar in Bangkok, Thailand (Paddy, you may recall him from previous blogs) turned up in the same bar as us! Seriously, these nights are so spontaneous, I really look forward to the weekend just to see what I'm going to end up doing.
So as you can see, I'm really settled here. Work is great. I'm getting exposure to all sorts of systems on a huge international scale and all of the people I work with are great. However, there's a sour edge to work at the moment, as out department is being outsourced to Infosys... Yup, one of those awful call centers based in India. So at present, many Infosys employees are roaming our office, dropping in on our work, trying to figure out what the hell we are doing. The contract was sold for $70 Million dollars for 3 years*... (pretty sure the majority of that was just for me). The transition will occur at the end of February, so as of 27th February I will be un-employed, but not seeking employment, as I am able to claim back all of my tax (30% of my earnings) and my super-annuation (9% of my earnings paid into an account by my employer, additional to my salary) back. It should amount to quite a bit, so I'll no doubt head out on a new adventure come the new year.
Well, Dan and I are off to Woolworths to get the groceries in (Woolworths is like Asda here!). Catch up soon!
*Infosys Deal: http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24561078-5013040,00.html
Hey Brad
ReplyDeleteGood to see you've settled in nicely.
That looks suspiciously like an Apple keyboard attached to that 22 Inch Samsung!
Good to see the iPod Touch has made it that far with you. I was worried after your episode with the last one.
Not sure about the whole getting up at 5am thing. Although, if it's anything like Japan, it may already be warm and sunny at 5am at the right time of the year.
Shame it all has to end in Feb though.
At least you and Danny are still together - surely one of this centuries most enduring love stories!
Enjoy it.
Andrew
You bet it's an apple product. Brisbane doesn't actually have an 'Apple Store' as such. Just a couple of Authorized Re-Sellers. They do an OK job I suppose...
ReplyDeleteYeah, the sun rises here around 5am (trust me, Dan and I have arrived home in the blistering 6am heat many times) which is pretty nice to wake up to.
Yeah, well come February I'll just get to lounge around for a period of time until I get another job. I should definitely get my 2nd year here though, as my manager at Rio Tinto has agreed to fake a letter saying I worked out in a mine providing 'Site Support' hehe.
Hmm... Well Danny will be back over your way for X-Mas, wonder if he'll make it back to Oz?
Villa are doing well I see... Oh... Hang on a sec...
Brad.
Gee, aren't Rio Tinto lucky they can afford your fee :P (most of $70mil did you say?)
ReplyDeletehehe, I like the pic of the Samsung monitor, complete with state-of-the-art "fly-screen" in the background:).
Nice blog, Brad...hehe, and I checked out cheeky monkeys -- Dan got thrown out?! Have you told me that story?
Dave