Perth Life

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Nicola

Yesterday was the first day of Spring here in Perth, everyone at work getting very excited at the prospect of the Summer just around the corner, bringing with it the end of the rain and the start of wall-to-wall sunshine. I have to say I was rather more sceptical! Having seen the weather report for the rest of the week, I knew for sure that we hadn’t seen the last of that pesky rain....

We’ve been in our little ‘unit’ in the Shenton Park/Subiaco boarders now for 4 weeks, and they have been an eventful 4 weeks! Firstly there was the issue of the mould, guessing that we had just been excited to see the flat we just hadn’t looked at the ceilings, the day we moved in we noticed the blackness on most of the ceilings around the place. The smell of damp when you walk in the door was also a rather big give away! Luckily we seem to have got very nice landlords (who also LOVE the English, which is handy for us) who have gone out of their way to get it sorted out. Unfortunately this did involve a fairly incompetent ‘handyman’ who has managed to stain our lovely bedding (that we had shipping over from England only the week before) with bleach spots. Why he didn’t move it out of the way is anyone’s guess. Thankfully the landlords have agreed to reimburse us!

So with the mould issues somewhat sorted, it was time for another issue. 2am in the morning, water pouring through the kitchen ceiling. We stared at it in a stunned sleepy way, before Andy got dressed and went to hammer on the unit upstairs front door. Turned out they’d had a pipe burst in their kitchen and they were completely flooded. Once the water had been turned off the water stopped coming through our ceiling and there doesn’t seem to be any harm done.

Work for me is as an Executive Assistant for the State Government, working in their Building Management & Works department (BMW they call it, which I find confusing). Despite my new qualification as a Company Secretary it would seem that I’m not going to be able to use it out here. Perth is just not the place to be – I need to be over East to hope to secure something in my field, but they’ve got quite a recession going on over there at the moment, so we still think Perth is the right place to be. The department is really nice, and the people all very friendly – and only a 15 minute commute to work, which I haven’t had in a very long time (wait, have I ever had that?!) It’s also not a very busy role which is giving me plenty of time to compile endless spreadsheets planning our travels next year.

Andy’s job is equally as thrilling, it keeps being extended so doesn’t have a fixed end point at the moment, and as there doesn’t seem to be anything else waiting around the corner, he’s happy to stick it out for now.

We’ve splashed out on some fancy snorkelling gear (spent well over an hour in the dive shop going through the pro’s and con’s of spending so much money) and I got myself a wetsuit for the bargain price of $99, not a named brand, but saving $400 by not having Roxy/Billabong/Quicksilver was fine by me! We’ve attempted to use the snorkelling gear twice, both without much success, it’s more surfing weather at the moment than snorkelling, so getting battered around by the waves and current really wasn’t what we had in mind.

I’ve decided to take up running – a drastic transformation I know! But it’s got round to that time of year (happens maybe once a year when I start thinking I should really be exercising) again and as I can’t afford to join the fancy gym in Kings Park I’m going to have to run around it instead. Andy was enthusiastic until I informed him that he had to also run with me to be timekeeper! So, I’ve got my 10 week plan and hopefully at the end of the 10 weeks I’ll be able to run for a whole 20 minutes in one go, considering I struggle to run for 1 minute at a time now, it’s going to be quite an achievement!

As the weather is less than favourable this weekend we are going to take the opportunity to do some indoor activities, maybe the Perth Mint or one of the museums we haven’t managed to get to yet. In the next few weeks with the weather hopefully getting better we hope to venture further afield and see some of the wonderful scenery Western Australia has to offer.

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