//extrabright

Several things to do during the first week of our stay. On monday I went to the building of the National ICT Australia, where I am doing an internship, to meet some of my new collegues and to perform some administrative tasks like the opening of a bank account or the buying of pre-paid phone cards.

View on the Bondi road from the serviced apartement window

On tuesday we began to look for a place to stay. We decided on the one hand to have a look at the advertisements for independent and furnished flat on some internet sites and on the other hand to look for a room to rent in an apartement together with other students. We began with the former. After a few hours on the internet searching for flats or studio in various area of the city, we did phone calls to agents in order to visit some place. It was not so easy to get a visit relatively quickly. Some of the agents took our phone number but few called back. Later that day we decided to go to the UNSW campus (University of New South Wales), beside the building of the National ICT Australia, to have a look at advertisements for room to rent. We took a bunch of phone numbers and began to do some phone calls. We first visited a few rooms, like 2 if I remember correctly. One of them was in a flat not far from the university. There were an australian guy and his asian girlfriend. However the guy who was in charge of renting the room was not there, so we decided to go back at the university – otherwise it is possible that we would have decided on the spot to stay there.

Then we went to visit another room, this time on the other side in respect to the university, at about 12 minutes of walking distance from the campus. It was in a house with a nice garden, a pool, a lady in her mid 50′s and half a dozen of students from the UNSW. We made our mind and decided to stay there. That place was a bit more expensive than the one who interested us, the room was however bigger and we thought that it would be a nicer place for Silvia to stay, as she is not going to do some special occupation during the day, apart from english courses, visitting the city and various cultural activities.

As the question of the place to stay was handled on tuesday evening, we took then the opportunity on wednesday to visit a little bit the city. Sydney is a nice town. Although about 4 million of people live there, everything has its own relaxed rhythm. No stress and easy going.

The Sydney Opera House

On thursday I began my internship. As always, the first activity was to install my computer. My main operating system: Debian stable.

Needless to say that the trip from Switzerland to Australia is rather long. 6 to 7 hours from Zurich to Dubai, our first and unique stopover where we spent a short night of a few hours in a hotel near the airport, and then about 14 hours of flight between Dubai and our destination Sydney. Although I cannot normally sleep in a plane, I somehow managed to do it that time, thanks to the relaxation audio programs available on board. I was quite happy about it. Four hours of sleep are already doing a difference. Silvia was however not able to sleep but could watch a few interesting movies from the on-demand movie system. There were really good films, some of them are probably still scheduled in the cinemas in Switzerland (like the Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy to cite just one among 150 others). The company, Emirates Airlines contributed to a pleasant journey.

The arrival in Sydney was on the saturday 27th of August at about 7 am. For us it was 11pm european time but we decided to stay awake on that day and to go to bed only later in the evening to try to catch the right rhythm as soon as possible. That day we went first to our serviced apartment in the area of Bondi to have some rest and let our luggages, then for a walk at the Bondi beach. Not so much people, as it is winter here in Australia, though 2 dozens of surfers in the water and a bunch of people walking along the beach. Nice afternoon tinted with moments of tiredness and a night of sleep beginning rather early in the evening.

The next day on sunday was also a bit odd. Sometimes we were quite tired during the day. But already from monday I was alright with the jetlag, though it took a bit longer to Silvia – about one week – to live normally in the day-night rythm.

Just a few words about me. I live in Lausanne and Zurich, Switzerland. I am studying Computer Science at the ETHZ in Zurich. I am presently in the 8th semester.

I am going to use the English as the main language for that blog, because if I use French, my mother tongue, the people in Zurich are not going to understand it and if I use German, that will be the case for the people in Lausanne.