Pete showing me around town...

My good friend Peter stayed with me for 10 days, it was the end of his 6 month studying/working vacation.  He came to Melbourne for a semester at La Trobe University and an internship... then went to Barcelona for a skateboarding holiday and stopped back in Melbourne on his way home.   It was so great to see a familiar face and to be introduced to the buddies he had made here.   The strange thing about having a friend around was that it really made me miss Neal, my friends and family so much more...  

Pete and I really enjoyed showing each other the restaurants and spots we had found around the city.  My favorite of the new spots is a bar called Carlton Club which is just a short walk from my place.   I can't wait until my next visitors :) Check out the new photos, link on upper right.

 

My favorite iChat Buddy.

Every night before I go to bed I iChat with my sister, Nancy, and baby niece, Jillian, while they are having their breakfast in Maryland.  Tonight I took snapshots while chatting and I just have to share them.  
After breakfast Jillian gets a quick rinse in the kitchen sink.

And you can see me in the corner, the proud Auntie.

Keeping Busy...

I've been doing so good filling up my schedule that I haven't posted in two weeks!  The picture above is the roof top patio at Bimbo Deluxe, a cool bar and restaurant, where tonight we celebrated one of my engineerings buddies roommates birthday... it was a great spot, M-Th they have $4 gourmet pizzas!  I've been staying quite busy with work, bikram yoga, and socializing.  Friday night I went to dinner and a movie with a super sweet couple, Jacqui and Alistair.  Saturday night I was dinning alone at my favorite Italian restaurant and I was about to head home for a quiet evening when I started chatting with a nice guy who was in town from Brisbane for the evening... keeping up with the Australian hospitality he invited me out for a drink and we ending up going to a few bars and having lots of great conversation.   Sunday I went to yoga, did my grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning... but even that was a bit different in Melbourne... my furnished apartment didn't come with a vacuum cleaner so I asked my apartment if I could hire one (no one says "rent" here) and the concierge on duty said he could lend me one... check it out:

I was laughing so hard at myself while wearing the vacuum I had to take a pic.  

Friends!!!

Saturday I went to a really fun 21st, 50s themed, birthday party.  My bosses daughter, Liz, has so kindly included me in her group of girlfriends, thank you!!!  I just got back from dinner with them tonight as well, they are a great group of ladies and know all the local hot spots.  Besides the much needed social activity, I also found a secret sale this weekend!  I was looking for a mid-length black coat, for all that damn wind, at the big Australian department store Myer's.  I had narrowed it down to two coats... debated with myself for a good 20 minutes, made my choice and feeling pretty good about the $100 marked down from $180 purchase.... then the cashier says, $10.  I was on cloud nine as he explain that today only, not advertised, any Miss Shop or Tokito previously marked down items were $10!!!  So, of course, like any good shopper I continued to look at ever other item included in the sale and made four other smart choices.  I ended up with two jackets, two dresses, and a sweater for half the price I was originally prepared to spend.   What a sweet weekend.  

Gale Force Winds

Things are going great. I am slowly making some Australian friends, I am trying not to come on too strong but it's hard cause I have none... so any potentials are being hit with full force Marilyn, hopefully I don't scare them off.

I have been learning a lot at work and thankfully all my coworkers have been very welcoming and patient in teaching me how system control theory can be applied to irrigation water management, Rubicon calls it Total Canal Control, TCC.

Today was by far my coldest day in Melbourne so far... not because of the actual temperature but because of the Gale Force Winds. (The National Weather Service defines a gale as 39 to 54 mph of sustained surface winds). I was listening to the radio while getting ready to leave for work this morning and there was a severe weather warning due to Gale Force Winds, and I thought, hmmm... I wonder what that means... I knew windy, but how windy? I soon found out that Gale Force Winds can actually push you along or stop you in your tracks. Wow, weather! Something new for a native Arizonian.

The wind won the war... my MJ umbrella is officially toast. 

TGIF

Me at my desk.

So I made it through the first week of work and it was really no big deal.  The office is way more laid back than I was expecting... when we are getting tired of working we take ping pong breaks!  I have joined a group for lunches and have settled into a nice schedule of work, bikram yoga, and the internet.  Thursday was also exciting because I broke my routine of eating dinner alone and had a dinner with a coworker.  Tonight I went to dinner and drinks with my bosses daughter and her friends and had a great time.  I am looking forward to the rest of my weekend and plan to explore more of the city and nearby parks.

A shot I took from a cool rooftop bar in CBD (Central Business District), I will take you there if you come to visit me ;)

First day at the new job.

Today it was back to work.  A short walk to Flinders St. Station (in the pic), a short train ride, another short walk and I was there.  I got in at about 8:15am and was surprised to find I was the 2nd person in... I had been worried cause I had planned to get there by 8am but I missed the earlier train, having to stop for a flat white (coffee and steamed milk, haven't gone a day without one since arriving) before boarding, but most everyone trickled in closer to 9am, nice.  So the day went really well, all the coworkers were very nice and I felt like was absorbing a least a little of the tons of new information being thrown at me.  I was a little bummed that I had to eat lunch at the cafe just across the street by myself, apparently everyone packs a lunch. Other than that I was very happy with my first day and was just getting ready to leave when...  I created a mini disaster for myself.  One of my first day tasks was to go through a set of irrigation as builts... any engineer knows full size plans are the worst, and old hand drawn plans from the 1960's are almost pointless.  But apparently irrigation districts are the same on both sides of the Pacific and only could provide us with the original and only set of as builts, something I've had the pleasure of seeing before.  The new part for me was the giant death trap of a cabinet they were hanging in.  Seriously, everyone that walked by made a joke about how it looked like a torture device, I wish I had a picture of it!  No, don't worry, I didn't injury myself... but like I was saying I was happily packing up and just wanted to put away one sheet I had been trying to decode, when I learned that the cabinet had the capability of opening up way too far, sending literally hundreds of individual sheets to the ground... crumbling and the worst part slipping out of order as I tried to pick them up.  So, instead of heading home feeling good, I got to spend the next hour reinforcing my hatred of full size plans, resorting and rehanging the aging plans, while of covering my hands in the ink some poor engineer wrote in 1960 on the heavy mylar sheets.  Aww, Engineering!