Summer in the City

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Settling down

We spent all of January fruitlessly looking for jobs. The economy was shaky and nobody wanted to hire Brits so we consoled ourselves by taking up jogging around Albert Park and relaxing on the beach as well as going out with friends around Melbourne.

We both had numerous interviews with agencies, and in between stopping businessmen getting mugged (ask Paul...) and seeing Suze's aunty and uncle we were pretty much busy the whole month just seeing some sights and doggedly trying to get jobs to pay the rent.

Back to reality, back to work

Suze managed to find a telesales job in the city working on commision, not the best job but in a great location in the CBD and it was money coming in which was important. Paul got a telesales role for a couple of weeks converting people to Victoria Electricity before getting a job in Occupational Health & Safety in the city, which he continued until the weekend before we left Melbourne. Although he did quite enjoy the fact his work email footer said 'Incident Bureau Safety Officer' possibly a little too much, I had to draw a line at him carrying a clipboard to work (multiple pens in the top shirt pocket has never looked so uncool).

Our jogging routine was interuppted by an epic 3-day heatwave where temperatures reached over 40 degrees daily and never dropped below 30 even at night (we had no air con...) and a few weeks after the 46 degree 'Black Saturday' which was the cause of the massive fires in the Northern Suburbs which killed over 200 people.

We also had time to enjoy some festivals (to try and cope with missing Glastonbury this year). The St Kilda festival was awesome with thousands of people lining the closed off streets, esplanade, parks and beach with great local and national bands playing (and not a drop of mud in sight).

We also were lucky enough to get to the Good Vibrations festival where we saw Chromeo, Roni Size, Sam Sparro, a very drunk Fatboy Slim and Aussie favourites The Presets, all in one baking hot day at the Flemington Racecourse just north of the city.

Finally the Gay and Lesbian parade passed down Fitzroy Street just outside our apartment so we met up with some friends and had a gander at the sights, some of which were cheeky, some of which just plain scary. We also went to see the Australian Open tennis (well we had to do something whilst waiting for the multitude of job offers) and saw a streaker run across the court during a Williams sisters doubles match.

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