Tag: melbourne

Wild Friday night

Damjan and I were in the city when the sky turned on the faucet at full blast. We ran through torrential rain to Flinders Street station and joined other drenched rain refugees.

The train took off and we stripped off jackets, dumped umbrellas and squeezed out our hair.

Not quite six stops away from home, the train stopped. We sat in silence for five minutes. There was no announcement came to explain the pause.

A few people began peering out the window.

‘Hey, Damjan, do you want to look what’s happening?’ I said.

‘Okay.’ Damjan got out of the chair and joined the growing crowd.

‘The track’s covered in water,’ he said, as he slipped back next to me.

We sat for another five minutes before the train finally started inching forward. Slowly, slowly, we pulled into the next station. The train had made it past the flooded section.

When we finally reached our home station, the rain was as heavy as ever. We readied our umbrellas.

‘AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGHH!!!!!!!’ I said quietly as I ran down the platform through the biggest storm I have ever known.

Damjan and I paused for a breath under the station canopy.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Ready.’

I barrelled down the ramp to the underpass squealing, ‘I can’t see! I can’t see!’

Then, ‘AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGH’ as I found myself knee deep in water. I leapt back.

‘It’s all water!’

The underpass was flooded. I looked back to the platform, where a couple of people were huddled in confusion. There was no other way out.

‘YAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ A man flew, charging into the water.

‘You dropped your keys!’ I cried, picking up his keys and a USB disk.

‘I’m taking my shoes off!’ Damjan yelled.

‘I’m just going to go for it!’ I yelled back. My shoes were made of netting and rubber. So I gritted my teeth and ran into the cold swirling brown water.

The water came up to my thighs.

I burst out the other side yelling, ‘Your keys! Mister, your keys!’ He wasn’t there. No one heard me.

A red car flashed at me. Damjan’s dad was waiting in the parking lot. I threw my wet self into the back seat. Thirty seconds later, Damjan arrived too.

On the way home, three times, we reversed out of flooded roads to find another route.

We finally made it home, where Damjan’s sister was mopping up the water that had come through the ceiling.

London in Melbourne

My London workmates gave me a great present from Muji: London in a Box.

I’ve now set up the London skyline on my desk in Melbourne.

London city scape in my office
London city scape in my office

Here is a close up of a few pieces (from the Muji website).

London in a Box from Muji
London in a Box from Muji

Muji also sell New York in a Box (soooo iconic), Italy in a Box (the whole country? Surely Rome has enough landmarks?), Germany in a Box (heh, I wonder if they include a big broken wall), Paris in a Box (I don’t think the Eiffel Tower is much good), and Edo in a Box (very delicate cityscape).

Man, I love these wooden toys. By the way, this is not a paid advertorial for Muji.

Secret backside of Parliament House

I work near the Victorian State Parliament House. Here it is looking all grand and neat on Spring Street.

Parliament House of Victoria, Spring Street
Parliament House of Victoria, Spring Street

And here is the secret backside view I get of Parliament House from our office lunch room, which is on the 18th floor.

Back of Parliament House, Victoria
Back of Parliament House, Victoria

It’s messy at the back, isn’t it? You can see the temporary cladding, scaffolding, ladders, pipework… Parliament House on Spring Street is like a facade on a movie set.

Working at altitude

Last week, I moved to the Melbourne office and I’m now sitting on the 17th floor of my new building. In my old building, I used to climb up the stairs to the 5th floor. Now, I take the lift.

Usually, there are at least two stops on the way up and down. However, I got peckish today and took the lift down at 10:30am. This is an off peak period; I was the only person in the lift.

There were no stops so as the lift accelerated down, I felt my ears pop.

Think local

Retravision is one of the biggest electrical goods retailers in Australia, and each of its stores is privately owned.

Last Christmas, my family visited a Retravision store. This one is in at one of Melbourne’s south-east Asian community clusters.  It was the kind of neighbourhood where all the store signs are in Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Hindu, and where a white Australian person would be vastly outnumbered.

As my parents talked to the salesperson, I wandered around the store. I love electronics so I am easily occupied in such stores. However, an inspection of this Retravision did not yield the typical delights. Currently, I’m interested in noise-cancelling headphones but the headphones section consisted merely of five earbud-style models. The camera section was paltry, with no digital SLRs. I did find three minutes of entertainment on the massage chair.

So if there were no headphones, cameras or computers, what was taking up all the space in the store?

Well, a quarter of the floorspace was devoted entirely to karaoke — speakers, mixers, microphones, amplifiers, disc players. That’s where my parents were, interrogating the salesperson about the specs for a wireless receiver and microphones.

You’re not too surprised, are you, considering the neighbourhood? This Retravision store owner definitely knows his market.

Home, year 2

At 2 AM last Tuesday, Damjan and I flew into Tullamarine Airport. Home! Home, for the first time in over a year. Perhaps annual trips home will be the normal pattern of things.

Previously, I had made a list of distinctively UK features. I am now seeing Melbourne as if I am a newcomer, and here are some of my observations.

As soon as I walked out of the airport, I smelled Melbourne. Melbourne smells like vegetation and rain. London never smells like that, even though it rains a lot and there a big parks about.

Despite my first week here being cloudy and rainy, when the sunlight appears it is as white and bright as I remembered.

There is much less advertising in Melbourne compared to London. It is refreshing to take public transport without being bombarded by ads. I love sitting in my suburban train to the city facing a shiny white wall. However, Melbourne trams are as ad-heavy as London buses.

Only about one in ten people on the train are wearing headphones. In London, 90% of people use headphones! There are also relatively few people talking on their mobile phones. In the UK, more than half the people I see on public transport and walking on the street are on the phone (if they’re not wearing headphones).

It’s easy to slip back into car use, both as a passenger and a driver. Melbourne is so car friendly that car feels like the natural mode of transport. London is so car unfriendly that even short car commutes have made me feel ill and stressed.

The kids from my high school look puny.