I've Arrived!

Wow, that was a long trip! We were delayed in LA for a couple of hours. All I could think of was how I could have been spending those 2 hours on the plane, but was just sitting at the airport. My neck pillow ran away and I went to find a replacement at one of the airport newsstands. On my way back to the gate, I spotted my old neck pillow on the ground. YOU! Bad pillow. When I tried to return the recently purchased pillow, I was unable to since the supervisor wasn't around. How ridiculous! Now I have 2 neck pillows to take care of. I slept most of the trip comfortably stretched out across 5 seats. It's like being in first class...but with seat arms poking at my ribs.

The apartment is really nice. I settled in around 1pm. The bathtub is big and it’s weird that they it didn't have a shower curtain. The toilet has 2 flush buttons, which I later come to find out that one is for number 1 and the other for number 2. I guess they have a water shortage problem here in Oz. These 2 levels of flushing help to conserve water. Everything here is SO expensive! I went to get a 2 liter bottle of water and it was $3.50 AUD. I’ll have to learn to drink tap water.


I walked about 10 minutes into the downtown area which crosses a river. The view is gorgeous. The first order of business was to find a cellular phone store and see if my phone works here. I bought a RED Sim card from Vondafone and it worked! I have pretty good reception here (maybe even better than I had in the States). Then I went to get a Metlink card for the public transportation system and dropped by the visitor information booth to pick out some brochures. There’s a free City Circle tram that runs around Melbourne so I hopped into one of those. It’s about a 45-minute trip around. The city is full of colorful architecture and looks pretty clean. I did see a lot of Asians around the whole city. I was a bit disappointed that in the few hours I spent in Oz, I have yet to hear any real Aussie speak. There was a guy on a bicycle that yelled at a car that almost hit him, something like “Watch it, mate!”

I called Dave on my cell phone to see if the team is going out for dinner. He’s from the UK and I had difficulty understand some of the things he said. He and Joe came back around 6pm and we walked over to Southgate to meet the other two team members. Once we met up with Lorraine and Kevin, we went to a bar for a beer. I thought for sure I would pass out if I didn’t have something to eat soon.