We are looking for an apartment. This is our fourth week of looking, and so far I’d say we’ve seen about 15-20 apartments. The way they do it here is like this - the landlord contracts out to a real estate company who holds an inspection (open house), which usually lasts 15 minutes. Most of the inspections are on Saturday mornings all around the same time, so you create a plan of attack during the week and run around on Saturday morning trying to see all of the apartments you want to see, which is actually impossible. I usually call the real estate agents beforehand to try to see if the potential apartments line up with our basic criteria, so that we don’t spend precious minutes on Saturday morning going to see an apartment that ends up not having a stove (that really happens).
But the real estate agents usually don’t care about me or the apartments (that Aussie customer service ethic shining through), so our conversations usually go like this:
Me: I was wondering, does that unit have a stove?
Agent: I don’t know. That’s what the inspection is for.
I’m pretty much 100% sure that the inspection is not for the agent to inspect the apartment, but whatever.
They also have this thing where you can “reserve” an apartment you really like by giving the agent a few hundred dollars on the spot, which makes the landlord look at your application first, and you get the money back if you’re not approved. This sometimes causes the small crowd of people who show up to the 15 minute inspection to push to be the first to race through so they can come back out and give the agent money.
The good thing is that the application process is all extremely regimented and the real estate companies act like disinterested middlemen between you and the landlord, whom you never actually meet. There are rules governing what they can and can’t say about you to another real estate company when that company asks for a reference on you, so you never have to deal with a weirdo landlord who hates you for no reason and won’t give you a good reference.
So T and I won these tickets to see a matinee of the Australian production of Avenue Q. Basically, the day we landed in Sydney from the US a couple of weeks ago, we found a copy of this free weekly magazine called The Brag and it had this thing in it like “Email us and win tickets to Avenue Q” and we were like, whatever, this magazine is like a week old, probably someone already did it, but we did it anyway and bam they gave us some tickets. I guess no one else reads that section.
Well I happened to have seen Avenue Q on Broadway and thought it was funny and that T would like it, so I was pretty happy. Plus he Googled it and found out that the cheapest tickets are like $79.
It reminded me of going to a show in New York in every way except that they didn’t give out programs, they sold them for $15 apiece. I asked the usher if they had regular programs, aside from the souvenir programs, and he was like “Um, no, theaters don’t do that.” I could have been like, “Actually, buttface, they do,” but I didn’t think that would make me any friends, so I just sat down and imagined information about the show.
The main reason we wanted the program was to see if any of the actors were American, but it turned out to be more fun to guess based on whether they slipped up and sounded Australian. Most of them did once or twice, but it wasn’t really obvious. The funny part (to me) was the set. The show is set in Brooklyn, and this production seemed to be set in the part of Brooklyn where the housing stock is mainly Australian condos. It was way too clean, for one thing, and also way too pastel. Also the doorknobs were up high like Australian doorknobs and the tops of the buildings were infested with those old-fashioned TV antennae that I now associate largely with Australia (not many people here have cable).
I am kind of obsessed with the differences in building materials and styles of house between the two countries so I had fun picking out everything that I would change about the set, and then annoying T by telling him all about it. Halfway through the second act I was like “I’ve got it! The frames around the windows need to be black instead of white!” and T was like, “…What? I guess.” (Later I Googled the original NY set and was vindicated.)
Anyway it was a good show and we both had a great time - I recommend it if you’ve got 79 Australian dollars kicking around in your pocket.
1) I found a new band I like called the Avett Brothers. I only have one of their albums (Emotionalism) but I can’t stop listening to it. Check it out if you like catchy tunes on guitars, or folkish poppy rocky bluegrass, or things like that.
2) I came across this story and I thought it was great. I could have written it myself (except for the Dutch plop-gnomes): Funny story
3) I think it might be spring here. It’s hard to tell.
We got back last week from a two-week trip back to the US to visit my family. It was such a great idea - someone said “This trip will help you realize this didn’t all disappear” and I don’t know if that was it, but it definitely helped me feel like family/home/the US is still accessible. It was also very refreshing just to see the landscape in Maine and New York - the greenness and fullness of the grass and trees that I grew up with and the pretty old two-story clapboard, stone, etc. houses that I’m used to. And I loved hanging out on the lake in Maine and going to the Adirondacks - those lakes and tall pine trees are so peaceful and familiar! I also enjoyed stepping out of Penn Station when we got to NYC for our flight and being back in the busyness of it - it was jarring after the quiet of Sydney, but I do miss that big city. And obviously the best part was seeing family and friends and just hanging out.
Anyway, it definitely recharged my batteries and made me feel much happier when we got back to Sydney. Now T and I are both in full swing of our classes at TAFE (which we missed the beginning of over in New York) and are also starting our search for a new apartment now that our six-month lease is up (we’ve been here six months!) so we’re going to be doing a bit of running around. Well, before we got here, T warned me that the first six months would be the hardest, so maybe this was a perfect time to take that trip and recharge.
