Felipe Alvarez's blog

We got a phone number today [finally]. I can’t tell you the number, because it’s like .78/minute + .29 connection fee to send a receive calls. Sorry. We will have to keep emailing and Skyping. The phone is a hand-me-down from one of EV’s cousins; some cheapo white candybar Nokia with 1998 ringtones and no camera.  Hey — it does the job and it cost us $0.

We looked at another apartment today. $385/week $325/week, which, to me, is quite a lot of money. It’s over $700/month per person. We decided we have little choices left and asked for the application. It asks for things like references, passport, drivers licence, and previous landlords. We filled in the missing details, more or less to the letter, and made the necessary photocopies at the local library. Oh! Funny story! We get to the photocopier and start taking out change from our wallets when we see $1.00 credit already in the machine. Sweet! After using it all up, we realised we needed more, so EV gave me a .50 coin to make change. In my fanciest Australian accent I asked the woman for change. “20 cent coins is OK?” she asked. I nodded. I received the change and walked away. As I opened my hand I counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Five 20 cent coins! She just gave us extra money to use for free! What a dummy! Anyways.

We got hungry (more like I) and went down to the mall’s food court and ordered noodles at the “Two Wongs Asian” restaurant (you can laugh now if you got the play-on-words). After the first bite, Yvonne accidentally knocks the tray and spills all the food on the floor. At first I was shocked. $8 gone, and still hungry. I went to the shop owner and explained. “Nothing I can do for you,” he said. I asked for a discount, and he agreed to sell me the same dish for $5.

Monday we look at more properties (2 so far I think). Tomorrow we hand in the applications for today’s place. I want to be out of here fast.