Today started out on a positive note that belied the actual hellish day that awaited me… I woke up rather early, but went back to sleep several times because… well, because I could. It's vacation. :-) Once I finally did get up I had myself some delicious Nutri-grain cereal and wet out for a jog. My Bodylink GPS seems to work out here so I was able to get speed and distance and will get maps of my runs once I get back home. Pretty cool. The area out here is quite hilly, so I didn't get as far as I'd have liked. Only a couple of miles, but every little bit helps. I need to be vigilant to work off the Magnums and all the food Elizabeth forced down my throat last week. (Yeah, she forced me to eat. :-) )
After a shower I decided to head back down to Queen street to hop on the net and do a whole mess of things. The first order of business was to try and find cheaper internet access. Unfortunately, Telstra's stranglehold on this county's telecommunications is as strong as ever (more on that later), so the best I could do was buy a special phone card that gets me on for 20 c per minute, which is still preposterous but less than $8 for 30 min. There's supposedly free access over at close by mall, but since today was a public holiday here the mall was closed. I will test it out tomorrow.
While I was at Starbucks a guy saw the Microsoft Asset tag sticker on my laptop and sat down and introduced himself. He works in the local MS office, and he invited me down sometime this week after the holiday. I might see if they have free net access for visiting Redmond employees. :-)
The other order of business was figuring out how to meet up with my wantoks here in Brisbane, and arrange housing either with them or elsewhere, since tonight was my last night booked with the Kookaburra. Amanda had sent me a text message the night before, so I finally had her number, but since I want to limit use of the cell phone because I can't charge it, I decided to buy a phone card to give her a call. I got one that has great rates, but none of the numbers would work on the Telstra pay phones. Eventually I used the toll-free number they listed, but the rates on that are apparently horrendous because I used up nearly half the card's value with a 10 min local Australia call. Sheesh. It turns out that the numbers are local, but not toll-free, which means if you're using a pay phone you have to pay on top of the calling card to actually get connected. Yeah, Telstra always gets their cut. Since the pay phones do not give change and you tend to wind up with only $2 or $1 coins, I decided to buy a third phone card for use on the pay phones to save cash. Yup, I now have three phone cards, each for a unique purpose, plus a cell phone I can't really use. I should be a writer for Seinfeld.
After talking to Amanda it sounded like things were pretty insane with her wedding coming up on Saturday. The last thing I want to do is be a pain in the butt when they're trying to plan something like that, so I decided I'd just try to extend my stay at the Kookaburra. It was tough to rearrange their schedule, but it finally worked out where I only have to move rooms once and can stay until the 20th. Huzzah!
Next order of business was changing my flights. It has become clear that I have absolutely no reason to go to Sydney. So I called up Qantas and rescheduled my flights from Brisbane to go direct to Melbourne and skip Sydney altogether. Too bad it cost me $175 to do it… Oh well, I probably would have spent at least that much on housing while in Sydney, so I am probably still coming out ahead.
Right after I got off the phone with Qantas the Kookaburra woman knocked on the door and said my credit card was rejected for payment for the net few days of my stay. Crap. That led to the discovery that I neglected to get my other credit cards and put them in my wallet, which I intended to do prior to my leaving the states. I always manage to forget at least one thing when I go on a trip… sometimes they're unimportant, sometimes they're not…
Anyway, the rest of the day was spent trying to get my sole card reactivated. The numbers on the back of the card didn't work - all I got were busy signals or disconnects. So I tried to find new numbers on the net, but none of those worked either. Finally I wrote Bethaney and asked her to call on my behalf. After I sent the mail I decided to try one last number for WaMu banking, even though it was a credit card, not a debit card. I figured they could transfer me, and that's what they did. I finally got everything reactivated, so I should be good for now. But that meant I needed to go back and write Bethaney to tell her not to worry about it. So I walked the half-kilometer back to the Starbucks to write Bethaney, then finally came back to the Kookaburra.
Oh, I forgot dinner. I went to this steakhouse called sSs. It was OK, but not worth the money. I dropped $60 and frankly, it wasn't that good. Service was horrible - they were short-staffed it seemed, probably due to the holiday. I had to pay a 10% holiday surcharge, too. Yeah, I'm definitely not in the States anymore. Each and every soda refill cost me too. Note to self- drink water.
I feel like my holiday hasn't even started. I'm almost more stressed out here than I was in Redmond. Hopefully tomorrow will be more relaxed. Amanda says there is a PNG bung tomorrow night. She's supposed to call me with the details tomorrow. But that would be on the cell phone that I can't use, so who knows what'll happen... :-)