Bloga Vagabonda: A Job! An Apartment!

Summer has officially ended in Sydney. It's a little cooler, it rains more regularly, and more importantly, I was finally able to find a job. Previously having jumped through the hoops to get listed with 3 different temp agencies, it was the second agency who had never previously found me work that saved the day. After the first day of work (had to make sure it was a job I could keep) I jumped on the first cheap "flatshare" listing that seemed reasonable and moved in the following weekend.

I now work fielding e-mails and phone calls from 10:30pm to 6:30am in the top-floor office of a large, international company that handles large building construction, real estate investment and development. They're very environmentally focused, and have free snacks and a slew of beverages. I work with two other cool women, and although it can be a little tough to focus after about 4am, the work isn't too stressful. I share a room with two very young (18 and 21) Asian-Canadian sisters, and an apartment with 6 other people on top of that.

Another way of looking at this: I'm currently working for $32/hr to field phone calls from the US and UK and I live in a place called "Chippendale" (for $135/week, if you were interested - nearly as cheap you can get in the city). I'm sure someone sees the irony of me moving over seas to answer calls from the US for probably twice as much as I would be paid there (and an apartment of the same or cheaper price per the living situation).

Fun. The only concern is that the apartment has 9 people, right? Well, right. There are people living in the living room (linguistically appropriate, but ghetto). I work all night, sleep all day, so most of the time I don't have to deal with the people living here very much. But as a friend pointed out: it's a recipe for disaster. And the psychic connection is strong with her - last night fellow flatmates were talking about how they couldn't get one guy residing in the living room to leave. Evidently he threatened to kill the small, somewhat meek Thai woman in charge of renters. In short, sounds like a number of people may leave, or the apartment might get cleared out all together.

I'm keeping my eye out for other places.

Although I have to give some credit - if there weren't 9 people living here, it would actually be a pretty nice little apartment (though the "modern" design of the sinks and the bathtubs leaves water all over the floor...).