Not gonna lie though, it's been a pretty cool month. I won't pretend and say it's been 100% fun and giggles the whole time, because though there has been much fun and giggling, there has also been a lot of stress trying to not become homeless and make sure I have enough space for all my crap I'm bringing along. Did you know? Apparently Australian hostels are more expensive than subletting a place from someone like 90% of the time? I'm not sure if this is because of the "benefits" they give (No hostels have been worth their "benefits" except MAYBE The Village Melbourne with its gym), but it's super not worth it anymore LOL. I've gotten a lot more situated in the past month, and barring a short trip to Brisbane, have kind of figured out what I wanna do with my time here.
So what's good after one month?
I've learned a lot living in Australia for one month, and being a frugal bitch, one of those is where to find the cheapest food. Did you know? The common grocery chains here in Australia like Woolworth's or Coles will sometimes price down hot/prepared meal items to a fraction of what they cost originally right before they get thrown in the trash. This means, if you play your cards right, you can score hot wings, sandwiches, and salads for pennies on the dollar of what they originally cost. It's always a gamble to see if they'll even have anything marked down, but it's always a gamble I'm gonna check, I love it.Otherwise, kind of sick of living in hostels? I don't know if it's because of the aforementioned tiredness, but the whole hostel atmosphere is really bogging me down. I'm tired of having the same conversations with the same kinds of people, dealing with the nasty conditions some of these places think is acceptable, and just dealing with the awful customer service 50% of these hostels have. If I was willing to blow more money, I could of course stay in a hotel or something with actual decent conditions, but I guess I haven't expunged that much frugality out of myself just yet. If it was a shorter term stay, I'd probably be more willing to spend the dough, but as it is I'm still on survival mode haha.
I've also kind of figured out what my plan is going forward! I think I want some time to really settle in for a bit and grind out some game dev. What does this mean then? At the moment, it means finishing my little trip up the east coast to check out the cities (last stop: Brisbane hopefully, fingers crossed), and then returning to Melbourne! "Why Melbourne?" I hear you say, "I thought you thought it was stinky!". Well yes, dear reader, Melbourne IS stinky. The beaches are pretty lame compared to Sydney's. The weather's not as good. But you know what it does have? Good infrastructure, a liveable wage/housing balance, a thriving art space, an inclusive and easy to access Dungeons and Dragons community, and it knows how to party. Plus it's flat as shit, which, tbh, makes it way less interesting to explore, BUT allows for way easier access by bike! Which is what I wanna do! Hell yeah!
I've also been trying to break out of my habits a bit more, which has been very difficult. I'm a very "set in my ways" kind of person, and it's been difficult to try and forcefully break bad habits I've fostered for several years. One thing I've learned about myself is that I'm for sure getting better at it! There have been some bad anxiety episodes when things don't go according to plan, but I'm slowly and surely getting better at expressing a "laissez-faire" attitude towards most things, and not taking everything too seriously, which is definitely a direction I want to be heading in. Hopefully more personal growth will occur on this trip, but that is yet to be seen!
Some other things I've kind of enjoyed/not enjoyed have been trying to cook in hostels and small homes with very limited space and ingredients. Turns out, spices are expensive as SHIT here in Aussieland, and as someone who's been moving around a lot, lugging around a 1kg box of salt and pepper doesn't sound super appealing to me. Some hostels have been godsends and have had a shared spice rack (thank you Barkly Backpackers, review coming soon :) ), but lately, as of writing this post, my homemade meals have been EXTREMELY barebones, with little to no spices involved because I am a silly guy who doesn't think of these things :( Also just lugging my luggage around in general has become pretty cumbersome, I'm really looking forward to when I'm able to find an apartment for work or something and have a semi-permanenet base where I can not have to worry about carrying all my crap around every week or so.
AND THAT IS THE END OF THIS BLOG POST!
Sorry for the shorter one this time guys, I'm not in the best spot for trying to write a ton of blog stuff at the moment (still trying to learn coding which is eating up most of my computer time), but I promise I'll have a Sydney post out by the end of next week, I really wanna write some stuff down while it's fresh in my head.Oh well! Until next time, my lovely lovely blog readers. Hope you all have an amazing day/evening!
P.S. just because I like you all so much, here's a mega-compressed teaser image of Sydney:
