HAYCH-SBC and the Uninvited Fetus

I should start off by sharing the most devastating news I’ve encountered here thus far. I’ll just be blunt and come right out and say it: I have a roommate.

This tragic turn of events happened just this past Monday evening. I came home from an ordinary day at work, and saw the light peaking through the curtains of MY room. Naturally, this made me quite nervous. However, it HAD happened once before, and it was a false alarm – my room had been shown earlier in the day, and the office just left the light on. However, upon closer inspection, I noticed a very disturbing detail this time around. Through the curtains, I could see that the top bunk was made. There was a bag up there too. This was it. The jig was up. Someone had moved in.

Her name is “Rebecca” and she claims to be from “London.” I’m not sure how much of this I believe. Her name very well might be “Rebecca” but I simply CANNOT come to grips with the fact that she claims to be from London. While she does have the funny British accent, she has NO traits characteristic of one who comes from an urban environment. Case in point: SHE NEVER LOCKS THE DAMN DOOR.  Now once I can forgive and chalk up to a freak oversight, but this girl has already moved onto her 4^th strike, so it’s time to lay down the law. When I come home at the end of the day, and there is no one in the room, that door better be locked. That does not seem to be the case. Everything is always open. Nor does she lock the front door to the house when she returns. Or leaves. Now maybe she thinks that a magical door-locking fairy takes care of these minor details. Maybe that’s how it works in England. I certainly don’t know. But here in Australia, when you DON’T bother to lock a door, guess what? IT STAYS OPEN ALL DAY LONG.  We are living in a backpacker community populated by a lot of frequently drunk kids with no money, in a city of 4 million people. Doors need to be locked. I simply don’t understand. Who leaves the house and leaves all the doors open???? This kid is not from London. She has the security mindset of a country bumpkin.

I saw her resume lying on the floor when she first moved in. I saw the birth date (I swear, this crap was all out in the open! The kid is also a bit of a slob, but I won’t subject you to an additional paragraph ranting on that as well). She was born in 1990. She’s practically a fetus. This child can’t even walk into a bar in the United States. Her 21^st birthday is coming up soon though! I don’t remember my 21^st birthday, and I don’t mean because it was a rockin’ good time whose details have become hazy due to massive amounts of liquor. I don’t remember mine simply because it was over a half decade ago! Who remembers that far back??? I’m living with a fetus. Seriously, my stuffed dog Marbles is older than this kid.

Then there are the germs. Naturally, as she is a young child, she is sick. Ill. Diseased.  Flu-ridden. Coughs and hacks all over MY room. She warned me when she first moved in that she snores when she’s ill. Guess what? She’s right! I can’t tell you how many hours of sleep I’ve lost this past week listening to this unwelcome fetal invader snort through her REM cycles. I’ve tried shaking the bed. Getting up. Flipping on lights. Hell, I even threw something  (slammed, really) on the floor once. The throwing works sometimes. Usually I get 5-7 seconds of quiet before the disturbance starts up again. I’m being polite though. I even offered some of my cold medicine and magical vitamin C pills. Not so much because I want her to not be sick so she can enjoy herself, but I want the germs out of my domicile, and above all else, I WANT SOME PEACE AND QUIET AT NIGHT.

Rant over. On the positive side, she seems like a nice enough girl.

That being said, let’s move on to more positive things, shall we?

There honestly isn’t a whole lot to report on. I’m sort of in a settled down phase at the moment. Mostly doing regular things day to day. I’m enjoying HSBC, I’m glad I ended up there. It’s been a good experience for me to be able to sink into a new role, and having to do it quickly and in a new country! Most callers are friendly enough, but there are some real a-holes from time to time. Not too often though. And in the end, they are just cranky because their credit sucks and they can’t take home their $4,000 tv that they probably shouldn’t be buying anyway on the fancy buy now pay later scheme. The coworkers are all great, and I am thoroughly enjoying wearing my hoodie (or “jumper” as they call them here) to work twice a week on Saturdays and Sundays.

I’m making small efforts to sound slightly less foreign on the phone. Granted I have a blatantly American accent, but I’m trying to do some little things to make myself speak more “Australian.” I pronounce by letter “H” more like “HAY-CH” since that’s how they say it here.  “Z” is “Zed,” “calling” is “ringing” and “you’re welcome” is simply “no worries.” I’m getting used to the date formats, but sometimes I do make mistakes. Like when I ask a customer when they made their last payment, and I have, say, 07/08/11 on the screen in front of me, when the customer tells me August 7^th I have to catch myself before I tell them they’re wrong. My brain still frequently reads the dates as we do them at home, but it’s getting better.

I usually take anywhere from 25-40 calls a day. Yesterday I did 52, which has been the most so far. It’s karma in a way I guess. This is payback for all those days at Bernstein when I felt lazy and sort of ignored the phone. Now I have to answer it 40 times a day! It’s not so bad though. Most questions are fairly similar, it’s a lot of the same stuff over and over again. It’s a LOT of effort though, to sound happy and chipper on the phone all day long and talk to so many different people. I never realized so many people purchased things using interest free accounts. Do we do this a lot at home too? It’s an interesting idea I guess, although I sort of abide by the school of thought that if I can’t pay for an item right here and right now in full, then perhaps I shouldn’t be buying it.

We had a contest today at work. Predict the number of calls. I won! I guessed 323 and we got 324. I would have been dead on too, but in the middle of my last call of the day I accidentally hung up on the lady, so she had to call back. That ended up being the 324^th. Damn. I receive my prize tomorrow. ANYTHING I want from the vending machine. As long as it’s under $2. So I’m quite pumped to get my first free HSBC coke.

Are you grossly bored yet? For those of you who are still with me, here’s the tourist stuff that’s been tackled recently:

Cheryl and I went on a “ghost tour” of Sydney’s historic neighborhood, the Rocks. It was actually a pretty scary place back in the day, and I don’t mean because of all the ghosts. It was TOUGH. Like, you walk down the street and you might not make it alive to the other side tough. It was nice to see the neighborhood (which has gentrified quite a bit since the early 1800s, it's now chic and way over my price range) since that was my first trip up there, but the tour was just eh. It was mostly “ghost host” Maxine rattling on about all the different “experiences” that previous ghost tour customers had felt in the different spots.

I also finally walked across the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Now at some point I will actually CLMIB that sucker, but for now I’ve tackled the walking across part. I also went up the Sydney Tower, not so much because I cared to do so, but more so because I had a combo ticket for a bunch of local attractions so I basically paid for the damn thing already anyway.

We went on a daytrip to Manly last week as well. Manly is a beach town about 7 miles from the Sydney CBD. We took the ferry over, which was a nice harbor ride experience as well. Checked out OceanWorld, which is Manly’s small aquarium, and then we rented a kayak and paddled around for a couple of hours. Cheryl was smart and came prepared to get wet. I didn’t think all that was necessary at first, but in the end I was the one who had to waddle home in wet jeans and wet underwear. We were able to kayak to a small beach that’s only boat accessible, so that was kind of cool. It was a gorgeous day. It probably got up to about 70. I like how people complain about “winter.” Please. It’s the DEAD of winter, and I’m kayaking to a beach, wading around in the surf.  Australians wouldn’t know what to do with the white crap. I really want to tell people at work my day after Christmas story, the one where I tried to get to Bernstein but only made it as far as Citi Field and then walked home 4 and a half miles in over 2 and a half feet of the white crap. But first I must to the distance conversion, as no one will grasp the pain of that morning if I speak in feet and miles.

I also tackled the Maritime museum, which was interesting, and best of all, free! I like free. In a city where they expect me to pay $8 for a coke and a bad slice of pizza, free is my friend. I really miss pizza. I refuse to eat it here. I know it will be garbage.

Other news/thoughts:

My aunt and mother finally figured out their visit. So while a bunch of you talked the talk, only the two of them are actually walking the walk. Or flying the fly, or whatnot.

Gymnastics is going along swimmingly. I’m really enjoying both gyms, and both places are giving me the opportunity to work on things that I didn’t have the opportunity to do at Chelsea Piers.

For some reason, a lot of bars around here are called hotels. Now that’s confusing, mainly because actual hotels are also called… hotels. This falls into the chips (French fries) and chips (potato chips) category.

I get paid once a week here instead of bi-weekly, which is fun, because I’m just ALWAYS getting paid! However, rent is also paid weekly. So I am always paying rent.  Every Thursday, I have to pay rent. I don’t like it. I’d much rather pay them $600 a month and be done with it. This $150 a week thing is just too much. I forget more often than I remember to pay it on time. Good thing they don’t seem to care all that much.

I’m starting to think about what comes next. I think I have a vague outline of what my time here will consist of until about mid-November, and then it’s anyone’s guess. I have to make an appointment with the job guy soon to see if he has any potentially interesting gigs that I could tackle.

The America questions I get at work are funny. I actually really enjoy them, because it allows you to look at your own culture through the eyes of someone else. Sometimes things that we think of as perfectly normal are in fact quintessentially American in nature, but you don’t realize it until some non-American person points it out. I showed a few people my American driver’s license today. Someone had asked me to see it. Our New York State license got positive reviews! People like that it’s sort of bendy. Apparently Ireland only gives you a piece of paper that says “yup, this person can drive.” Once through the wash and it’s a goner.

Not much else to report. This isn’t really the most adventurous phase of the trip. I’m just living and working in Sydney.  But while most day to day details at this point are on the mundane side (at least in terms of providing enough firepower to keep a blog super entertaining), I’m very much enjoying adopting a new city as another home away from home. Sydney is starting to fall into the Paris category, whereas it might be a million miles away from what I’ve always known, but there’s still a nice, comfortable familiarity about it. I just wish the damn cars would stop coming at me from the wrong side of the road.