Weeks 89, 90 & 91: Earning and Spending

Time is passing so fast now that I am working, the last three weeks have been rather uneventful. Week 89 I was still working in the center of Perth, upgrading the computers in the main offices of the Department of Water. One of the evenings I was just coming back into the building after a lunch break when the lift broke down. It had only moved about a foot upwards from the ground floor, but it stopped and none of the buttons would work anymore. I pressed the emergency intercom and was told that an engineer would be sent out to me as soon as possible. After about 10 minutes I got bored of waiting in the lift and decided to force the doors open, the inner doors were easy enough, but the outer doors had a strange double latching system that took me a few minutes to work out. It was the first time I have been stuck in a lift and was the most exciting thing to happen at work that week.

For the last two weeks I have been working in ‘regional offices’, most of these offices are in small towns spread out across Western Australia, but we started with the ones close by. This week I will be travelling south to a town called Bunbury for a week or so, it will be nice to be able to see more of Western Australia while I’m doing this job, which I just found out has been extended an extra month, until the end of May. I’m still working two extra jobs in my spare time, writing articles for a travel website and building websites. The great thing about doing all this work is being able to buy things that I have been wanting for months. I finally bought my new laptop after around four months of waiting, over the next few weeks I’ll buy a new digital camera and a mobile phone, then all my wages will be saved for my time in Asia.

It seems that the place I am living is going through some changes, many of my housemates are leaving, some returning home at the end of their visa, some moving on to different parts of Australia or other countries. I was really lucky to find this place so early in my time in Australia, I’m sure I will stay in touch with them and hopefully meet them again at some point. I feel like there isn’t as much exciting stuff going on at the moment, but I know that I have to take some time to work occasionally during this journey, so that I can travel more in the future. It is really nice to spend some time in one place, going to work every day, coming home to the same group of friends, just having a normal routine (well almost normal). But I am looking forward to getting back on the road at the end of may for a while, on my way up to the Northern Territory.