Arriving in Melbourne, Australia

6:30AM Melbourne

All right. For some weird reason that only lives in my mind I thought it would be superbly interesting to blog all my trip to Melbourne, Australia so here I am.

Friday the 13th. First day for me in Melbourne. Mind you I got on the plane from back home on the 11th but since I was traveling across time zones (and a huge trip) I just arrived early morning.

Interestingly, after a 21 hour trip that totally wore me out, I had a very interesting experience in the airport – and I say that in the most disgusted of ways. As I passed immigration and went to collect my bags, I was singled out, for reasons that I’m not sure of, to be searched. Now I’m sure many are saying “so what?” Well I’m sure you’ve never been searched like I was. They put on gloves, put on their best interrogation voices and started going through my bags. They pulled out every single clothes article I had, rummaged through the pockets, rummaged around the bags, checked for any hidden drawers in the bag etc.

While one of the officers was busy having a field trip on my stuff, another asked for my wallet and went wild with that. He pulled out absolutely everything I have inside. All my IDs, my cash card, debit card, pics of family and friends, souvenirs (yea my wallet is stuffed with crap that I like). All this is happening with a background of non-ending questions about my work, how long I’ve been doing it, how I’m doing it, what did I study, why did I change careers etc.

This interesting episode took around 20-30 minutes. I was the only person – the ONLY person – on the plane who got this treatment.

Yea of course I’m 100% sure it was not racial discrimination!

Ok, fine. Let’s not dwell on it for too long. I’ve whined enough!


9:00

Arrived in the hostel, check in is at 2:00pm.

Time to go explore a city.


11:00

Melbourne is a really interesting city. It reminds me a lot of London in the way the city ‘feels’. However, where London’s architecture is rather bland, it is here simply amazing! All the buildings have a strong modern influence to how they are built. I’ve been walking around the city, taking pictures of everything I see. Been stupid old me, however, I forgot to get my camera’s cable so I can’t take too many pics before I fill her up. If I’ll regret one thing about this trip, it’s not having enough pics of it.

Then fate has a very interesting turn of events for me. I go to pray in the local area mosque and as I walk outside, I saw this girl with a name tag. Now as I took a closer look at the nametag I found that it was someone I’ve been talking to online for a while! We just met there of all places in the world!

Talk about a small world!

Ok, since I don’t know if she wants to be named here, and she will be mentioned often throughout this blog, lets call her MK. I met MK there and we talked and she was extremely nice. We agreed then on meeting again later in the day.

Did that and things had a strong turn of events. We got along really good. She’s a very very nice person. We spent the rest of the evening together, she invited me to dinner with her family who were all really great to me. We then went for a walk, and for coffee, and before the day was over, her mum (incredible nice in all the traditional motherly ways possible) offered me to stay at their house instead of the hostel I was checked in.

Noticeably of course, I took the offer :)