The Voyage of Discovery

11:47 PM. First entry. I’m on the couch in my rented apartment in the dark watching cricket in some gym shorts. My feet and eyes hurt, but weirdly I really dig it right now. Plane took off at 5:30 PM Tuesday night from Atlanta, one short layover, then landed at 7:00 AM on Thursday in Sydney… because that’s how time works apparently.  January 8th, therefore, didn’t exist. Literally lost somewhere across a dozen time zones and buried under the black waters of the Pacific, hopefully alongside the entire crew of Lost.  I was fortunate enough to sleep for 10 hours during the journey.  Ate some microwaved intercontinental TV dinner after we left LAX, then ordered a glass of white wine, chased it with a few Ambien, and remember telling the dude next to me, “See you in the morning” as I popped my headphones on and started watching We Are the Millers -- knowing full well I’d not make it through the whole thing.  I still wonder if they made it back across the border with that Winnebago full of weed. Some things are better left a mystery I guess. I woke up at 5AM and and it was barely dawn, the sun hadn’t yet peeked out over the horizon, but there was a soft orange glow breathing out over clouds and leaking into the sky.  I was on the eastern side of the place at this point, so I was lucky enough to see the sun poke it’s little nose out a few minutes later, when it did, the clouds lit up with dusty amber haze like a Southern field of cotton and clay. I thought about how many others had watched this same Pacific sunrise, perhaps my grandfather on his way out to Pearl Harbor one morning.  It was a warm feeling.  I didn’t trust my attention span and I sought to continue my sense of enlightenment, so I put on a TED talk about what home really means.  At some point shortly in I heard this quote and quickly tapped it into my iPhone:

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

How ‘bout them apples, yeah?  It’s been a long fifteen or so hours since we landed and, quite honestly, it still all feels too much like a dream.  I keep imagining a world where all the differences in geography and lifestyle aren’t ringing in my head like an ambulance siren.  I don't think I saw a single black person until well after lunchtime today.  Speaking of lunchtime, I went the first 9 hours without eating today, also completely unnoticed.  One of my goals in life has always been to enjoy the feeling of being hungry.  It would surely make for a healthier and cheaper lifestyle.  Based on how insanely expensive everything here is, I think I might just learn to.  A Totino’s pizza was $6.50 at the corner grocery, for example… I mean, it wasn’t actually Totino’s brand, but I know a 99-cent pizza when I see one.  I finally broke down and ate a late lunch with Zac at the nicest mall food court I’ve ever seen in my life today… there’s food everywhere here, and nothing costs less than $10.

As part of a new Google-friendly goal I have, I picked up a Nexus 4 Android phone from Zac at the Sherpas office today, pre-loaded and ready to go with some weird 11-digit phone number that doesn’t space out right.  By “right”, I of course mean American. That also means I’ve been carrying around two phones all day, which is dreadful, throws off my right pocket left pocket game that I’ve worked so hard to perfect these last few years.  I took saw an actual Koala bear today at Darling Harbor, just chilling at a wildlife preserve by the bay.  Only 10 hours into my Australian excursion, I of course Snapchatted it and, as I excitedly tapped every name in my phonebook, my Nexus decided to restart itself and all was lost.  We had already walked away at that point, and I was embarrassed at how butt hurt I was to have missed the opportunity to share having seen it… much more than I was excited that it happened in the first place. Social media is ruining us.

I’ve preemptively decided that I’d rather live closer to the city than to the beach for the first 6 months here.  It’ll be easier to find a sweet pad by the water in the winter anyways, once I’ve settled down.  I arranged for viewings at two different apartments today, coincidentally on the same street in Pyrmont by the harbor, a gorgeous 20-minute walk from the office.

The first guy I met boasted that he had a penthouse (would make for an easy transition, right?) but came down to meet me in the lobby in a wardrobe that looked as if it were purposely wrinkled.  His name was Chad, which an abysmal bro name to say the least, and told me he was born in Romania or something, but looked more if Dax Shephard were exposed to too much radiation.  We walked into his apartment and my first thought was that he was cooking some really foul-smelling dinner. Then, as we talked, he opened and stirred the pot he was cooking, and I realized that his dinner was something different, meaning his place just always smelled that way, like a gym sock stuffed with burnt toast.  My nightmare would be living in an apartment that smelled that bad long enough for it to not bother me, so I asked some bullshit questions, politely poked around for a few minutes, and made my way off.  Despite all the rusted furniture and dead plants, the rooftop patio he had was pretty noteworthy though. Second dude was named Sam. He was running late, so I sipped an overpriced bowl of Tom Yum soup on the patio of the Thai place downstairs as I watched the melt down over the terraced roofs of the quiet Pyrmont neighborhood.  When he came down to meet me, I called him Alex by mistake. Oh, my bad, it’s only been thirty-something hours since my body's been horizontal. Alex, I mean Sam, was a 29-year-old Korean guy who reminded me of Johnny Tran from The Fast and the Furious.  He had a third Italian roommate named Daniel who wasn’t there.  I can only be left to assume that Daniel’s last name is Torretto and he’s a spitting image of Vin Diesel. Considering how much Paul Walker and I have in common, we'd maybe make the perfect trio. Sam’s place was pretty legit: nice porch, bigger bedroom, seems like the well-disciplined type who lived on his computer.  But there was at least 40 liquor bottles stacked on the shelves in the living room that kinda threw me off.  At least I know he’s not a total square. Alex doesn’t have a car either and said he only takes cabs home when he goes out in the city, but walks everywhere and never relies on public transit outside of that. He mentioned it being part of some “1000 steps per day” routine he has.  I’m instantly jealous, but then I remember how much my ankles hurt, and consider how misshapen my feet would be if I tried to pull that off in high tops.  I do know that, regardless of what happens, I will be walking multiple miles per day from now on.

The best New Years Resolutions are the ones you have no control over.  I should exhibit some control on improving my grammar, for I’m subtly noticing as I type this that my entire life has been a run-on sentence.  Ain’t nobody got time for that tonight, though. That’s all I’ve got this round. Catch you blokes on the other side.