Life in Melbourne

Oh Wow! will be the first impression I got the moment I saw the IBM office building. You can check in maps.google.com the exact location of my office. Copy "Flinders St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia". Now in the map you will see "Flinders Street Station" and beside this is a water area. This is the Yarra River. On the other side of the station you can see South Bank Promenade. And between SouthBank Blvd and Southgate Ave and before the Cook St, is the SouthGate. A city of its own. It has two major towers. One the HWT Tower and the IBM Tower. My office is located in the IBM Tower. We have around 29 floors, sorry I donno the exact number floors IBM has. And I am in 19th floor. The problem is I can take the photos of SouthGate but I can't take photos inside the office as cameras are not permitted inside the office. I am enclosing few pictures from the picasaweb for now. If I am in Melbourne this saturday(as talks are going on to cancel the Sydney training trip as we have client meeting on Monday and Tuesday), will take several photos and send it.

Melbourne has various places. But the main city is much smaller than our own tnagar. And the funniest thing, for this they have 5 stations. As I have said earlier there are trains going to most of the main cities and towns in Melbourne. And there are connecting Trams and Busses. And If I buy a daily ticket, which is valid for the whole day, then I can board a train or bus or tram from any place to any place at any time during that day. I cannot use it the next day. I am yet to explore the concept of weekly and monthly. I didnt go for weekly and monthly right away because I donno whether the sydney is trip is cancelled or not. If it is not cancelled then it is a waste, to buy a weekly or a monthly ticket, as I will be losing 4 days in sydney. Instead I thought I will wait till next wednesday to get either of those tickets. And here people call the main area of melbourne city as CBD, Central Business District. And in the CBD we can find all the major offices and the financial institutions. CBD is made of maximum nine major roads going from flinders street station and it ends in Victoria Street(check google maps). The streets, Elizabeth, Swanston and Queens are considered as the major shopping hub. Offices and shops are there in the other streets too.

I have been through Elizabeth Street and Swanston Street doing window shopping. There is a big super market in Melbourne named BigW. Guess I have mentioned it earlier, if not it is the original version of our Big Bazar in Chennai and Bangalore. The BigW is in the corner of Latrobe stree and Swanston Street. Harvey Norman a big electronic supermarket is in the Swanston Street. The branch in which my bank account is, is in Collins Street. Collins Street infact has all the financial institutions. I saw a citibank there and understood why they charge Rs. 100, when you go to a bank to do any transaction in India. They need to maintain the offices across the globe right. Infact I felt i might reduce loads of weight, because I was walking around the streets in the first two days. Yesterday didnt go for any shopping so no walking. Today I am thinking of going to room early by 09:00pm and watch a tamil movie. There is a movie channel in my hotel room which has adult movie running throughout the day. And the charge is 14.95$ per day, I think so.

The Yarra river which is next to our office has river cruises and all other added attractions. Need to go in that once Priya arrives here. I dont want to tour to all the places once alone and the again with Priya because then I will get bored. So waiting for her to come and tour Melbourne. My team mate Atanu Debroy is very helpfull. He is a guide to me and he has helped me a lot in locating most of the places. His wife is also coming in October for a month and a half as his kid is going to school. So during october we are planning to do a family outing and enjoy the places. Lets see how it all works.

In the food court available in the ground floor, there are various restaurants. But due to my selectiveness in food i have not yet ventured into all those and as of now having only Naan and dhall(either yellow or brown) to avoid any stomach problems. Later on I will slowly start experimenting. On tuesday I went to get many things for breakfast and also to eat from BIGW, so my hands were full and everything was heavy. So decided to take a taxi to hotel. It was driven by a Indian student. He is studying accounting here and in his last two months of course. He took me to the hotel. On the way once the meter reached 11$ he switched off the meter and said "Me Indian, You are an Indian, so I want to lessen your burden". There was another 900 meters to 1 km travel but he never asked or demanded even a single cent more than 11$. As a courtesy I offered him 12$ he said 11$ is more than enough and left. Good Guy na.

I got a map from the hotel and it was quite usefull till date. It shows the street names and also the station names in the melbourne city and the surrounding suburbs. Ok, all this is enough, but what i do in office. Today is the fourth day and they have spared me free till today to finish of the major works like bank account activation and other things. Here native Australians don't work on Fridays. So, my work will be starting from Monday. Depending upon whether I am going to sydney or not, I will start working. If I am going to sydney then it will be a seperate travelogue all together.

Ok thats all for now. Will continue in the next mail. See you all.

I have not given any explanation to any of the photos now. I will give you the comments for all the photos i take. Ok.

Take Care.