Our first day in Sydney was (of course) unusual. To begin with, it took us 16 hours to get here on the plane in coach! Certainly not without it’s fair share of pain. Julie slept for the entire flight except for a few hours at the end, and maybe an hour at the beginning. It wasn’t a restful sleep, but she did sleep nonetheless. I managed to get 10 minutes here and there but it couldn’t have totalled 2 hours.
The Sydney airport was busy. We were 30 minutes late and our arrival apparently coincided with other flights from other places. Immigration was completely jammed and took us nearly an hour to get through. In fact, once we were stamped into Oz we collected our bags and headed for customs. They told us line 4 which was jammed again, though line 5 looked pretty bare so we jumped into line 5 and realised that line 5 was a straight shot out of the airport — no customs, no nothing. We discretely tossed our customs form into the trash bin outdoors and headed for the taxi line. Whether we are in the country legally, or illegally remains to be seen. :-) My reply to any inquiries will be something like, “I’m old, I was confused…”
The taxi to us directly to our new apartment. Julie has seen the place when she made arrangements to rent it, but she has never spent any time here. The property manager met us at 8:45, we did some paperwork, and were all of a sudden living in Australia.
About the place: It’s small though not tiny. The layout is a bit odd and there must be issues with ants and other bugs because the kitchen has enough pest control products to make even my brother happy! That said, we see no bugs so the stuff must work! the living room is cozy enough and the dining room is also really good. There are two bathrooms, the guest bathroom being the best. There is also a WC separate for guest use. Plenty of storage in the place and the master bed is comfortable! No matter the ins and outs of the place, it really comes down to the view and it is magnificent. It overlooks the harbour and you can see the central business district to the right, North Sydney to the left and the harbour in the middle including the harbour bridge. The NY fireworks from here will be spectacular.
Once we were semi-unpacked and bathed we had stuff to do. We started with a quick check of the immediate neighbourhood here in Balmain East. The ferry is 1 1/2 block away. There is a mini-grocery near the ferry stop, several restaurants, two coffee shops, a pub, a salon, a spa and other stuff. The restaurants look cool - one in particular looks pretty swish.
Next we hit the ferry and took a 12 minute ride to Pyrmont. From Pyrmont we took the light rail four stops to where Julie works. It was a trial run of sorts for her commute on Tuesday — her first day back at work in CBD (Central Business District). The first order of business was banking. I needed to be present to be on our bank account so we handled that. We also applied for Australian credit cards at the bank which was not a guarantee as our US credit is not relevant here. That’s right, we have to start over here in Oz. We’ll see if they give us a credit card? (We feel your pain Connor).
After the banking Julie showed me around her work neighbourhood and we headed to Telstra to get my cell phone and set up wireless internet connectivity in our apartment and upgrade our television package. (We have to have a sports package to see any ESPN featured college football.) It seemed like this stop took forever though it was here that we first started to hit the “Man, are we tired” moments of the day. I got my iphone 5S which is different than the US phone but mostly similar. The thumbprint recognition part was cool to set up for sure. The worst part of this stop was learning that Telstra has to set up our internet/wifi and television package which will take 8 days.
Next up was the electronic store to replace my US Apple computer. Sadly, the cost of shipping my US machine was nearly $1000 so we decided last minute to just get a different computer in Oz. This stop was really fast and I walked out of the electronics store with a MacBook Pro and a wireless mouse. New computers are always fun but I was a little to “foggy” to really enjoy all my new tech!
Nearing the end of the day we got some Chinese in the concourse of the Ernst and Young building and then hit the grocery store for brekky items and stuff like shampoo. Today will be a shopping day for our initial resupply - yesterday not so much. Finally we headed to the apartment where Julie resided during her first 5 week stint and collected her three gigantic articles of luggage. They barely fit in the cab but we managed to get all the tech, the groceries and Julie’s luggage home.
Once home we unpacked a bit and then tried to come up with ways to stay awake until 8pm. We made it to 745pm and were both soundly asleep by 746. That was our first day here - fun and exciting — purposeful and action-packed — and most of all wonderful and spectacular. At least after day one, this place is more than we’d hoped for… we are lucky.
One quick note for my US friends and family: my new computer is an Australian configured machine. Many words are spelled differently here so when you see words like harbour and realised just know it’s correct if you’re here…
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