Day 258! Here we go, let’s find a job! Also today, we finalized our lease application. On top of that, the job hunt might have gone pretty well, for both Immy and I! Honestly, outside of the weather, I’m very pleased with the start of my time in Melbourne so far.

I woke up this morning, got ready for my day, and then FaceTimed my parents! I haven’t FaceTimed them since getting to Australia, so it was great getting to chat and catch up.

There’s a lot of new things going on in my life, but not a ton of updates which is interesting. So there wasn’t a bunch of new things to talk about, but we still had a wonderful conversation.

I was hoping that the updates would change today though, because today I was going to start my job hunt.

I set out into the windy streets of Brighton and made my way to the train station. I was heading downtown to get breakfast with Immy and then wander the city some more with her. We are both looking for jobs at the moment so we were going to hand out our CV/resumes to businesses.

But on my way down to the city, I experienced my first stalled train. This added some time to my commute, but I wasn’t in a rush. It did make me have to get a little creative with the route I took, which I found fun since I wasn’t needing to be anywhere quick. Over this week, I’ve been starting to get more and more comfortable navigating the trains and trams.

I arrived at the mansion hostel and was welcomed with another bowl of oatmeal from Immy! It’s going to be a blast living together and getting to do roommate dinners with our other roommate Rob (pending on if we get the house or not).

We ate breakfast, Immy got the hostel reception to print my CV, and then we went walking towards a street where I wanted to hand a couple of them out.

For some reason, I got the idea in my head that I wanted to work at an ice cream shop or just some sort of bakery/sweets shop. It sounded like fun, some physical work, and I’d get to sweeten people’s day (and probably bring leftovers home).

I walked into the first ice cream shop Fluffy Torpedo, but the person working just told me to apply through email. So a bit of a strike out on the first one, but I’d just apply to them later.

We continued walking down the street and quickly stumbled into another shop that wasn’t on my list for the day. A gelato shop called Gelato Messina. I saw there was one person working, so I decided to give it a shot. I stepped in and asked “is there anyone available to talk about a job opportunity?” And sure enough, the lady working was the manager!

She said she actually had a big need for staff, her supervisor (I think the position under her) just left and they needed scoopers as well. She even had time to sit down and chat with me for 10-15 minutes! She took some notes on my CV as we chatted and asked me some questions.

It also turned out that she was a dive master as well and did some work on Phi Phi island in Thailand! Small world!

Apparently she doesn’t receive many male applications either so there were a lot of cards in my favor… very serendipitous, just how I like it. She also asked if I’d be willing to learn how to make the gelato with the machine they use and I said of course! That got me excited that I might actually learn how to make gelato, not just scoop it. But apparently they don’t have many people that know how to operate it (or are allowed to) so if it stops working or they run out of gelato, they need another person that can use it.

In the end, she enjoyed our little interview and she told me to come in at 1pm on Thursday for a trial shift!

I believe, as long as that goes well, I’ll have the job! It kind of sounds like it might be for the supervisor role, which would be fun. But I’d be totally fine working just as a scooper too. So we’ll see what I end up doing!

I was super excited that my second ask was a good response! I wasn’t really thinking I’d get anything from today’s search, so that blew my expectations out of the water.

I asked a couple more places but none of them were interested in taking my CV. They just wanted me to apply online.

Immy and I wandered around a bit more and we popped into a few thrift shops and OP shops (Goodwill type shops). We then made our way towards her hostel for lunch.

It was a really good day to walk around the city. The sun was out and it was much warmer than the past few days… but it was quite windy still.

We were walking towards the Indian restaurant again when I saw a sign for cheap Chinese food. So even though it was going to be less food, I opted for that to try something now.

I got a beef and tofu on rice that was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it! They also had warm tea, which was perfect because the weather was already starting to chill down again.

We then headed on to our tourist activity for the day… the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne’s art gallery.

My legs were super tired from all the walking today and the past couple of days. But we still made the effort to walk around the entire museum.

It was really pretty with a lot of beautiful art to look at. I felt like there were less paintings and more chairs, places, etc. in it. Which is still art… but I was hoping for more crazy pairings. Allegedly there’s a modern art museum somewhere in the city as well, so maybe I’ll check that out soon.

We spent over an hour meandering through the different exhibits. There was an exhibit on African fashion, which I was interested in. But it was unfortunately one of the exhibits you had to pay for.

We then wandered back the way we came and found the cheap sushi rolls we found the other day. There’s a ton of sushi in downtown Melbourne. But this place is half the price of the others for the same thing.

Immy and I parted ways and I hopped on the train to get back to Brighton.

It didn’t take me near as long to get home as it did to get into the city today. When I got home, I immediately hopped into bed for a much needed nap. I was exhausted.

When I woke up, I applied to the couple of jobs I needed to do online. I also updated some parts of my RSA application that needed redoing. Then I noodled around on my guitar for a bit waiting for Sam to get home.

During this time though, I got a notification that Immy, Rob, and I had all finished our house application. So we should know if we got our place soon. Also during this time, Immy found out she has a trial shift at a fancy bar tomorrow night! Things are working out well so far!

Sam got home and his mother made us some “northern Thai curry” aka Khao Soi, one of my favorite Thai dishes. It was from a box so it wasn’t exactly the same, but it was pretty dang good still so I cannot complain.

Sam and I finished off our night watching a couple of the new episodes of One Piece and then calling it a night.

Tomorrow, before Immy’s work, we’re going to go on the hunt for work clothes for both of us. She needs fancy clothes and I need blank clothes… and I still need a jacket. So hopefully we’ll find what we need!

– Elie