Day one, how fantastic. I had the heart-breaking sight of watching my mother cry as the bus took her youngest son away from a nice rural town to the big city. Now don't get me wrong, my mind was set on leaving to be with my girlfriend while she was going through university. The first irritation that hits me... the trains aren't running, so the entire trip was done via bus. Huzzah! An extra hour of public transport! I hate public transport... Arrival wasn't all that fun either. I get out to find a nice 39degC, high humored day. Making it hard to breath. Now, I don't know jack about Melbourne I just know I'm located at Spencer Street Station (Southern Cross Station). So I begin walking in the direction of Flinders Street Station. I don't know the tram lines so I walk the entire distance. Which is a fair bit of a walk, carrying a heavy-ass backpack in near-40degC heat. So I find the station and a bit of luck hits. The first sign I see tells me which trainline I have to be on. So I buy a train ticket and start looking for line six, which stated "Access via Subway". Now, being a rural country-bumkin, the first thing I think is, "Subway, path underground". However, I am wrong. By sheer luck, and the thrill of standing on stairs that raise you (I'm entitled to a bit of fun) I find an overway leading to platform six. After about fifteen minutes of waiting the train arrives and I board it. It has to be the most popular train of all, because there is bearly room to stand, let-alone sit. So I'm on this train for about... say... twenty minutes before I finally find my train stop at Hughesdale. I get to the flat. It's cosy, which isn't nice in very hot weather. Anyways, I relax the rest of the night by setting up my wireless network, and desktop computer. -- Day two. Telstra still hasn't connected our internet. We decided to leave it to Wednesday to sought it out. We explored Oakleigh, a suburb next to Hughesdale. I went looking for a job, asking the local safeway for an application form. "No, it's all done online now" is what I was told. La-de-fucking-da, Telstra hasn't connected our internet! So I spend some money and buy some paper for the printer. Connect up the printer to the desktop and put it on the network. Nothing else happens, just another day in the city... I hate the city. -- As I expected of Telstra, they messed up our internet order. We had it set to be connected and it was supposed to be connected on Friday (Before I get there, on monday). Turns out they attempted to bill us, but never set the internet up. When we queried them, we told them we had changed our mind and didn't want the internet. Because of their mess-up, we got out of a termination of contract fee! Which was a blessing in disguise. For 6 months we'd be paying $17.95 for an internet connection of 256k with a 200MB limit! But after we canceled them, I called up good old Eftel and managed to get a connection of 256k with a 2gig download limit for $39.95. Much better value. But it'll still be 5 to 10 days before I can get everything up and running. I've noticed my laptop is so much more unattractive without the internet. I can't bring myself to do any form of programming without a net connection. Oh how I hate the city. -- My internet router has arrived from Eftel! It's sexy! Oh, did I forget to mention Telstra has disconnected our phone line? Duh' sorry, should have brought that up. Aparentaly our request to disconnect the INTERNET ONLY sounded like "we'd like to disconnect our entire plan, phone and all, cheers!" I hate Telstra... more. We called them up and they assured us that our phone was working fine... "Yes! That's why when I called the number with my mobile I met a new friend!" Either they have reassigned our number to someone else while we were using it (which I would have to assume they have safeguards for) or they disconnected it. They told us it might be our phones, but we have two, and neither of them work. So they assure us a technical devision guy will stop by today or tomorrow to aid us in our endevours to live midly happily here. Anyways, I decide to mess around with the new router and I connected it to the phone port (removed the phone and connected the router directally) and run a phone-line connectivity test. Bingo! Router says it works spot-on! So my natural feeling is... "Oh fuck off! There is no way our two phones are defective, what the hell is going on!". And here I am, writing this now. I messaged my girlfriend with my recent discoveries. The people at Telstra are so lucky I'm very mild manoured. But if I don't get the internet soon, I will stop being so mild manoured and get this company to sought it's fucking shit out.