Documents and renting

As I told you in my last post, the day I arrived I applied to get  the TFN and the day after I enrolled myself in Medicare.

Well, last Wednesday I got by mail the letter of the Australian Taxation Office with my TFN. Now I can legally get paid when I get a job and I can go to the bank to register my TFN in order to get full interest on my savings account without the government tax withholding.
Later this week on Friday I got my Medicare card, also by mail.

 

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Now, about renting, I'm talking about looking for a place to live. Although I have already rented a place for 8 weeks and I have only been here for 2 (I still have 6 more weeks in my current place), I have started to look around some of the suburbs of Sydney. This not only to get to know them, but also because of a matter of time. I've been told that here most places that are shown for rent/lease are not available right away. Most of the times the list comes out 2-4 weeks before it actually becomes available for you to move in. So in about 2 weeks I have to formally begin to look for a place to live.

Although Juanpa and Caro told me I can stay there for two more weeks than we agreed, and though I really like North Parramatta, I do want to start looking for another place closer to the city, or at least closer to the train station, where I don't have to depend on the bus. Even better I'd like to look for a place near my full-time job (which I'm going to get really soon) in order for me to walk there or at most go by bike.

In that order of ideas I've found that North Parramatta is REALLY FAR from the civilization... it takes me about an hour and a half on weekdays to get to the city, from the moment I open my door. On weekends it may be a little bit longer... and that is in regular bases. Yesterday, for example, there where train repairs in 4 stations prior to Parramatta, so I had to take a bus from Granville... well, going from Zetland where Arturo and Cari live (near the CBD) to my place and then to Coogee beach (like 20-30 min by bus from Central Station) took us about 4 and a half hours!!!!!!! We got to the beach almost at 7 pm... as you can imagine we didn't bathe or anything. We walked for a while, ate something, spent some time there and around 10:30 went back home. Well, I stayed all weekend with them at their place... if after going to Coogee I would have wanted to go home, it would have taken me at LEAST 2 hours, and I'm not sure I would have found a bus at that hour of the night.

… So, I want to move closer to the city. It would be great to live there by myself in a one-bedroom unit, but it’s quite expensive; so I’m considering sharing a two-bedrooms, two-bathrooms unit with someone (if you, reader, are interested in this, don’t hesitate in contacting me).

On the next post I’ll write about the areas I’d love or at least would be nice to live in.