Another hard day at work

Today I got to work at 9:00. We had a mentoring workshop this morning, which basically involved an old lady and an old man talking crap. "If your mentor doesn't have time to have meetings with you, what should you do?" Apparently "get another mentor" is not the appropriate answer.

I tired of this game quite quickly, so at 10:30 (I waited for morning tea) I skipped out to go and look at a house. I then spent the next three hours getting lost, trying to find Dale's work (in Ainslie, for those playing along at home) to get him to fill in the application form, then trying to find the next house to inspect (somewhere near Kingston), back to the real estate (Tuggeranong) to hand in the application form and finally back to Parliament House. The next hour or so was spent wandering around Parliament House. The grass is all a funny green colour (not yellow like it should be), and soft, but we decided that it wouldn't be appropriate for employees of the Australian Public Service to go rolling down the hill while at work. Also there was a man guarding said hill.

We finished the day off by driving past all the foreign embassies and a trip up Mt Ainslie to see all of Canberra at once. I was a proper tourist and took a photo. The embassies were most amusing. The American Embassy is about three times the size of any other embassy (think they're compensating for something?), the Embassy of Iran is just a vacant lot with trees and the Canadian Embassy had a man dressed up as a mouse on a scooter out the front.

Are you satisfied with how your tax dollars are being used?

In other (good) news, we seem to have a house to live in. In case you're not up with what's happened, the rental market in Canberra is horrible at the moment (unless you happen to own a rental property). The situation was not improved by the arrival of 45 Centrelink IT graduates two weeks ago. Dale, quite cleverly, found an out of the way real estate, with minimal online advertising to increase our chances of being the only applicants to apply for a house. This was all going quite well, until it turned out that one of our previous real estates had black listed us. It just so happens that we took this real estate to the small claims tribunal and won. Also they were crap. The Canberra real estate wasn't willing to just take our word on the situation (apparently the Brisbane real estate told a different story). Instead they asked us for a list of all the other real estates we've rented through in the last couple of years and rang them all. They must have all said nice things because today the real estate rang back to tell us we had a house. Which is nice - I was beginning to think I was the only Centrelink grad left without one, and we only have one more week of free accomodation left.

And finally, something freaky. This afternoon, I left my car (a white Holden Barina) in the car park downstairs. When I came back, it had multiplied (ie another white Holden Barina had parked next to it). Closer inspection revealed that this second car was also toting Queensland plates (although the unfashionable maroon ones, whereas mine has stylish green). Closest inspection of all revealed that the car was bought at Ross Lewellyn (or possibly some other combinations of l's) Motors in Ipswich - the exact same car yard that mine was purchased at. Ah, a little bit of Brisbane, right here in Canberra...