What Goes Up

The past few months seem to have been typified by some sort of highly localised and time-bound karma. Every time something positive happens, something else negative balances it out within about ten minutes.

I get my new flat signed for, I find out I can't pay for it except by cash, drawn painfully out of a hole in the wall in 4 £400 blocks.

I get a mobile phone, but it takes 3 days and the same number of calls to Customer Service to get it up and running.

I finally get myself a bank account, but the lady serving me behind the counter is so brain-dead as to not realise that 2 is less than 6 so has to take me through the Australian-resident setting-up process about 90% of the way (15 minutes or so) before realising her mathematical error and having to restart with the recent arrivals process, which takes about 30 seconds.

Or take today's little seesaw - my furniture is all moved in this morning (I could count the 6am wake-up to get to my place for 7.30am delivery as a downside, but it's quite a minor one), but I have neglected to request a fridge. Furniture purchase #1 will therefore be a fridge, unsurprisingly!

On a vaguely related topic, I went to a quite interesting (stated non-ironically) presentation about auditing yesterday - the highlight was my department head (the aforementioned English guy) seeing the delivery of the drinks just before the start of the talk, and finishing his introduction off as "the first presentation I've ever been to where they needed ice, and the first where they've provided sunscreen." (Australia does actually have fridges, but it appears that the staff bar does not. It does however provide sunscreen in an attractive industrial-sized jar, presumably for those playing tennis on the rooftop.)

Further to the topic of refrigeration (which wasn't going to be my theme of the day, but these things happen) - the thermometer has hit a peak of 36C for the second day running (it's nearly 8pm and dark, and the one on the building over the road is still showing 32C). This is not good for recently-arrived British people, especially quite hairy ones. I was quite amused, however, to read the e-mail sent around the office this morning. I'll have to paraphrase, as I don't have it to hand, but the gist was "We asked our building owners to fix our air conditioning in July, when we wouldn't be needing it. They scheduled the work for yesterday and today. Murphy's Law dictates that we should therefore have 2 days with highs of 36C. If you would like to remove your ties, please feel free to do so. We've also provided you with free water in the fridges."

In what I assume is an entirely unrelated incident, marketing restructures being apparently just as frequent and drastic as in the UK, the sender of the above e-mail has already left the company on garden leave!