This is getting Dickens-esque

 

I'm going to end up as a chimney-sweep. --Alright, I'm over-dramatising (as usual), but you've got to hear me out. I'm currently involved in this ridiculous job hunt -- and Lawd help me when I try to get employment in the sector I actually want a career in, because right now I'm nursing a serious case of the blues at Kmart's stony silence. It should not be this hard to get a retail job.

Some pretty interesting things have come out of my job hunt, though. I've been going in waves: first the undeniably better-paid world of sales and marketing, known also as "Hello, have you heard about the savings you can make if you switched to So-and-so Energy?" While I'm not sure how I would have enjoyed being hated for a living, it was a reality I never had to face as they were looking for people older and taller. I suppose I wouldn't buy energy from some bored-looking kid (it's just my face, there's not much I can do) who has to get other people to get the cereal down in the supermarket for her. I'm going to be very kind to door-to-door salespeople since I've had a brush with their world.

After finding myself without any interviews, I began panic and went through an application frenzy on the Internet. A lot of pride was forsaken that day; I admit to writing "...and I just LOVE LOVE LOVE coffee!" on my Starbucks application. Also, I made an application to Starbucks.

Finally, a couple of days ago, I gave up on glitzy, fast-paced dreams and faced reality: my local suburb. Williamstown is a seaside 'burb with a towny feel; everybody knows everybody's business. Naturally, we attract too many daytrippers and Hong Kong tourists not to have 47,000 cafes; so, resumes in hand, I stalked the streets. Williamstown's an old place, by colonial Australian standards, and we have many old and beautiful things, like the trees you can see up above. It turned out to be quite a pleasant afternoon, with the sun shining and the cookware store hiring. Kmart may have forsaken me, but hope endures.

 

It's beginning to sort of resemble Christmas

Originals here and here

They had a snowstorm in Helsinki. In Prague, the Christmas markets are beginning to show their beautiful selves. It's 18 degrees C in Hobart. Now, I hate to complain, but it seems like the whole world -- maybe less Argentina -- is in the grips of a winter wonderland.

I do love Australia, and I adore Melbourne. Autumn is a sensation and I only get a little hayfever-y in spring. But December is the month when my mind turns to knitted sweaters and slipping over on black ice. I know snow stops being charming by about day three, but my romantic vision of that Vinter Vonderland persists. I blame Hollywood and Ben Affleck.

But that's not the point of this blog! It's meant to be charming and pretty. Blogs are pretty and charming. That's the way it's meant to be. So I hoofed it into the city to snap some of my favourite Christmassy places. It's not all nauseating postcards of Surfin' Santa and crummy season-appropriate rewrites of carols. No, we can copy the Northern Hemisphere every bit as well as Argentina.

So let's see what we see.

ASW Top Tourism Tip: Melbourne's arcades are sensational places. Melburnians always seem to vouch for the alleyways; and they're fascinating and pokey and everything they ought to be. But the arcades are reliable in the way arcades are. You know one store only sells Russian matryoshka dolls? They're all carved by tooth in Smolensk or something. It's pretty great.

They have a forest down at Fed Square, too. I mean, it was hardly Nova Scotia -- the trees were fake! -- but we do love ourselves a traditional Christmas here. I can't wait for baking ovens on baking days, gluhwein, ecologically unsound conifers and goddamn velvet.

Oh, and one particular film.

Hello, home

Well, that was a very lovely week.

Pretty, pretty, pretty week.

It's a real shame I lack the technical skill to show you how shut-up-and-sit-down beautiful the country I live in is. (I also made the sensational decision to leave my picture-taking to the very last day, when it was overcast.) (Overcast for an Australian summer, that is.)

I did a lot of things; most of them involved television. At this moment, I have seen more of Reno 911! than I ever anticipated or actually desired, but hey. Spent a lot of time shouting at a questionably rendered Mario on the Nintendo 64, too, so at least my time was productive.

There I am!

And then there was HAMBURGER. As far as I can tell, it's a fish 'n' chip shop, but the only signage is what you see: HAMBURGER. (People on the Peninsula are sometimes a little strange.) I had to walk everywhere down there, as the ranch was in the middle of nowhere -- as "middle of nowhere" as a house on the main road can be, but anyway -- and HAMBURGER marked the half-way point, roughly. Orange on brown never looked so good.

So, what about those shenanigans I alluded to? Well, it was pretty crazy; one morning -- and stick with me here, because this is going to sound a bit preposterous -- I woke up with a hairtie around my wrist I'd never seen before. And I lost one of my thongs. (That's a flip-flop; we have some pretty funny names for things down here at the bottom of the world.) And I got a prickle in my foot. As I said: off the hook.

 

Schoolies, or How to Fall Off a Balcony

Ooh, I shouldn't. Because that does happen, often with tragic results. But it basically sums up what schoolies is to Australian high school leavers. What better way to commemorate thirteen years of first-rate, first world education than by drinking for a week in a beach house until everything you learnt is permanently eradicated.

Atta boys... Original here

But I digress. Because, despite the stereotype, I can smugly announce that my schoolies will be a charming, relaxing week away, with just the right amount of fun-in-the-sun nonsense and "Shut up, it's 11am; it's barely morning." Even I, Empress of Kvetch, struggle to find things to complain about. ...alright, that's a lie, but I'm very talented in that way.

Ooh, if you insist... Originals here

We're going "down the coast", which is tricky as Melbourne is in Port Phillip Bay... In truth, we're going around to one of the peninsulas, so we'll be between bay and proper coast. There's your answer, then. As far as I can tell, the plan is to read and swim and eat and watch TV and sleep; a general attempt to begin the post-exam healing process. We don't find out our ATAR (ie: Year 12 score used to get into university) until mid-December, and then it's a month before university offers are released. "Merry Christmas/Happy New Year/Happy Birthday! We got you this overhanging thundercloud of doubt. --Much love, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority".

So here I am, half-way through this lovely holiday. (Oh, the magic of scheduling posts.) Anyway, I legitimately don't think I have any readers at this stage (which is fine, everybody starts at zero... totally fine... doesn't bother me...) so that's a weight off my mind. Oh, and yes, I will start using my own images soon. It's on my List of Things.

Ooh, by the way, I'm trying to figure out what in hell is going on with formatting... The Blogsy app is great but I am not. We'll see.

How to build a life

I've reached a fascinating point in my life. For the first time, I have total independence (well, almost... I've got to be recognised as a legal adult first). Free from whatever high school was meant to be. Now I'm to spread my wings and fly off into the sunset on a unicorn. Or something. The only problem is I have no idea what I'm doing.

 

Frankly, I don't know how to exist in the real world. Weekdays are a mystery to me. What do people do? Where do they go? Do they brunch? Should I be brunching? All of these questions are giving me an incalculable amount of grief. I'm filling up the breathing space between exams and schoolies (I'll explain that for you next time) with two months' worth of errands: optometrists and concession cards and bobby pins, but after that I'm running on empty.

 

My aim is to Visit Things. Isn't that sort of the whole point of my blog? I mean, I exist in the world's most goddamn liveable city. (In your face, Melbourne, FL.) I have so many great resources at my fingertips; galleries and theatres and parks and summer. I leave to spend a year or so in London in March; it's time to grow up and finally appreciate my home.

I've a sort of rough hit-list buzzing about in my head; Melbourne's hilariously full of galleries and coffee shops and book shops (all of the good things). But I think I'd like to give you a tour of my life in this city that scrapes below the NGV and the Eureka Tower.

 

Source: TimeOut Melbourne

I fully accept the wishy-washiness of this post. But I'll get there. It'll happen. I could have blogged about the optometrist. You don't want that. But, for the record, I'm -2.75 in my left eye and -2.5 in my right.

 

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Dear souvenirs

I thought the nicest way to get to know one another might be a cutesy tour of my favourite souvenirs. I count the things I bring back amongst my most prized possessions, mainly because they always have such lovely memories attached. It's like a miniature trip away every time I see them.

Oh jeez, and reading back over this I realise I sound like the spoilt princess to end them all. Let me explain: my family travels so much because we put a priority on it, valuing it above other things and saving accordingly. I know how lucky I am! Phew, okay, little moment of anxious defensivism (is that a word?) over.

I got the two glass birds in a New Zealand junk shop. My pa and I went over there a couple of years ago to indulge a mutual love of Lord of the Rings (am I excited about the Hobbit? In a word: yes.) Along the way, I was permitted to indulge in a not-so-mutual love of Art Deco architecture, and thus we pilgrimmed it up to a town, population 22, that turned out not to be Napier. I mean, the four buildings in the town were lovely, but... The birds are grand anyway and serve a reminder of a happy road-trip amongst the most beautiful mountains and plains you could find.

The house is probably my favourite thing all of all my things. I was lucky enough to spend last Christmas in Austria, leeching off some friends over there. You're supposed to put a candle in it: then the windows and the door ajar welcome you warmly. I bought this in the Kristkindlmarkt out the back of Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna. Those Christmas markets... They're like a fairy tale. Twinkle lights and good company and gluhwein and schnapps ahoy. Even thinking about them now makes me tingle.

The cranes in snow is a cloth something I got in Kagoshima, Japan, when I stayed on exchange. Japanese people are right into cloth somethings, I found. If there's an excuse to use one, eight'll be procured. If not, they're just beautiful things to hang around the house and occasionally wrap lunch in. This one I found at a rest stop with my host family as we travelled through brittle Autumn mountains, eating sticky-sweet bontan ame and driving through clouds of sulphur.

My Sturt's Desert Pea dishcloth's been through a lot. My folks decided it was time to see our own country, so we went up through the outback a couple of years ago, from Adelaide to Alice Springs. And, despite days and days of searching for the famous plant, this tea towel is the closest I got to the real thing. We got eerie piles of rocks beside abandoned roads instead.

And this little owl! Another Japan favourite, from Miyajima Island (famous for that torii gate in the water). He's a little clay bell that I got as consolation for never making it to the handicrafts museum (a wound that still stings; God, I love handicrafts!). On Miyajima, the trick is to rent a bike, avoid having your map eaten by the terrifically tame deer, buy as many lucky charms from the shrine as you can carry and eat seventeen soft serve cones. If I took anything away from Japan (metaphorically... I took lots) it's that soft serve is goddamn everywhere. And the convenience store fried chicken is to die for.

 

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Just testing a few settings

Can't find the source, which is dodgy and shameful.

Proper and serious blog launch coming up soon, which I'm very excited about. I've got lots of things I can't wait to share! Also, I'll never have to think about those nasty exams again... Until I find out if I was accepted into my dream university course or not. 'Least I won't have to study; just sweat fingerprints into the newspaper and cling to my ticket to London. (Yes, I have one... Got your interest yet? Maybe you should follow me somehow by choosing your poison to the left there...)

Source: We Heart It

See you soon, beautiful people!

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