The World is Sick

There are no kangaroos here

Day 3 in Australia. It’s been pretty uneventful so far. We’ve settled in quite nicely. The apartment was nicely furnished. Not exactly a lot of room to play ball in, but everything essential is here. Tables, sofa, a washing machine and tumble dryer. Electric oven, microwave, toaster. Samson has been alright company, proving to be quite level-headed, albeit a bit boring.

We were supposed to report to UNSW on Monday, but we were late and ended up looking for other things. On the top of our list were internet and phone service. As of the time of this writing, 11pm Tuesday, we have acquired prepaid SIM cards. However, internet service continues to elude us.

About that. Internet is terrible. We’ve spent the last couple of days looking for brochures on mobile broadband services. I feel like I’ve gone back in time. Just about every plan, even those for fixed home broadband, has some sort of download limit. I mean, what year is this? Who the hell lives on a maximum of 1GB of downloaded data a month? You’d have to refrain from streaming just about anything. By the looks of things, I won’t be online very often during the next three months. Perhaps I’ll be able to sneak in some time while at the lab, waiting for things to happen. But back here, I don’t know. I find this highly depressing. I’m probably going to hang around Singapore a bit more, until other countries have upgraded their internet service.

I’m just writing this on Word because I can’t sleep. I’m supposed to wake up in time to get to UNSW for the next orientation session. Meh.

I already miss life back home. Everything here is sort of a crappier version of Singapore’s. We use prepaid bus tickets. The internet is primitive, as explained above. Trains appear to only service the city. Stuff is expensive. You have to boil water before drinking it. Toast cools down too fast to spread butter on it. Ice-cream is highly unappealing. The barbeque chips are pathetic. The only upside is probably that sweating isn’t a mandatory event when going to the grocer. While I appreciate that deeply, the cold, dry air has been horrible for my sensitive skin. I’ve found ways to combat this, but just barely.

We’re still waiting for Gerard. At the time of posting this, he might already be here. It really depends on when we can get internet service. Sigh. Life is boring without the internet. I want my news. I want my videos. I want to waste time watching retarded flash movies on Newgrounds. I want to endlessly browse Wikipedia, starting at the Spanish Inquisition and ending up at wet T-shirt contests. I want to read the webcomics that give light to each day of the week.

Most of all, though, I want to talk to my friends. It seems such a long time ago that I last participated in an engaging conversation, since I last laughed with real mirth. Of course, this was all happened just last week. But you know what I mean. 

Hopefully, things will get sorted out before long. Once work starts, I’ll probably not have the time to think about all this. The first day of the rest of my life starts… tomorrow. Yeah, that’ll do.