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Now blogging over at Onemanmanyplans.com.au

It's been real, thanks Blogger! Hey thanks for checking out this page! After 10 years of posting here and over 600 posts, it's time to try something new at over possibly greener pastures. Which means you can now find me and all my random adventuring ways over at One Man Many Plans . 

8 things I never expected moving to the Gold Coast



It’s been a long time between drinks in terms of posting here but I have fair enough reason, I’ve moved my entire operation from beautiful Bendigo to ever sunny (and occasionally stormy) Gold Coast Queensland. Me, the family and the dog arrives next week. And while I had a fair idea of what to expect, there’s been a few suprises during our time here..




THE PROBLEMS WITH RENTALS



Actually ‘The rental crisis’ would probably be more apt as it seems that there’s just not enough houses for all the people looking for a place to move into. New places to rent do pop up regularly (and at the speed they’re building them, I truly do mean new) but they disappear at roughly the same speed. What doesn’t help the situation is the apathetic attitude of some of the rental agencies – some won’t return calls or emails and very few will allow you to inspect the property in person (a requirement before you’re allowed to apply) outside of their dedicated inspection times. So if you find a great place you really want to inspect on Monday then you might be able to walk through it ....possibly Saturday, with the other 19 couples that had the same idea. Which means if you do decide
to apply, it’s usually a one in 20 or more chance of being the who actually gets to live there.

Seriously if I was a house owner who was super keen to get people in to pay the rent, I doubt I’d be happy of one inspection a week and only 15 minutes at a time at that...

We’ve checked out some seriously overpriced houses (whoever said ‘It’s not about the size’ never checked out these shoeboxes..) and some truly shit pits (the first one for example had a tonne of junk on the front lawn as the tenant was moving out and the place looked rougher than sandpaper on the inside). Amazingly for the same price per week for the shit pit, you could rent a slightly bigger and brand new house just around the corner.. There are of course exceptions to the rule and if you can find an understanding agent, buy them a beer or give them their weight in brass or something. We met two in our travels – one broke his own rule of ‘whoever applies first gets their application processed first’ (we were the second application and he was nice enough to send both applications to the house owner at the same time – unfortunately the owner picked the other couple..) while the second organised an inspection just for us and took our application and raced it through like Usain Bolt. She followed up straight away with anything else we needed and kept us updated with every step of the process, happy that she could organise renters for her favourite house owners. As a consequence, we move in Wednesday. (Thanks Chantelle you legend!)

So if you’re planning to build out here with the intent to rent, the good news is that it’s probably not going to be an empty house for long when it’s done...

PLACES SO NEW, GOOGLE HASN'T HEARD ABOUT THEM



We missed inspecting a couple of places for the simple fact that they were on streets so new, they weren't in Google yet. All we had was a sprawling estate location to race around looking for a random street (Babinda St, we're looking at you here..) before the inspection time ran out. Which they did and we never found what we were looking for. I could only imagine the problems utility services would have if the internet tells us these locations don't exist

I HAVE QUADRUPLED MY SHORTS COLLECTION..



 ...to a total of four. Kind of a necessity around summer on the coast, my legs have had more recent exposure than Paris Hilton on video tape. On my first day at work I was sporting jeans...and that was the last time at work I was sporting jeans (well it’s only been a week after all). Thankfully while they’re whiter than bleached crack, my legs don’t look out of shape enough to be hidden from the world :D

 IT’S A CAR FANATICS PARADISE



 It’s a given that there’s a lot of people with money around these parts however I have been quite impressed with the quality of cars they’ve been shoehorning their wads of cash into. On the way home from work the other night I spent the majority of the time trailing an Aston Martin Vanquish. Downstairs in this hotel carpark sits a 2015 Dodge Challenger and a very stealth looking black BMW Z4. Near the studios last night was an immaculate looking Alfa with a very tasteful racing wing. While typing this on the hotel balcony, I’ve just seen a Bumblebee yellow Lambo roll by that sounds like it’s ready to race on an F1 track. Yes there’s a lot of expensive SUV’s and Hummers running around but that’s probably the worst of the ostentatious pack. I figured there’d be fully chromed Contaches and Ferrari’s with stupid camber but thankfully I haven’t seen any of the like...yet. Top marks local car owners!

 I’M GOING TO GET FIT WALKING FROM ONE END OF WORK TO THE OTHER



 And up til now I thought I’d worked at some decent sized stations, but this place...it’s a regular house of leaves. I swear every time I walk into the place it’s spawned itself another studio. If you have a meeting on one side of the building and you’re on the other, you’ll have to give yourself half an hour to get there...or attempt to hail a passing taxi. So far I think I’ve met 20% of the people who work here and remembered about 15% of their names. When I took my family in for a tour yesterday I had to admit that I had no idea which area was which and who worked where...but at least I’ll keep my fitness level up just making my daily coffee now!

WE’VE BEEN CONFUSED...FOR SCHOOLIES



For those not in the know, Schoolies are the Australian equivalent of Spring Breakers. School goers ending the year with massive celebrations. Mostly harmless when sober but a hoteliers nightmare when they get on the juice. And neither Mrs Migo nor myself have been schoolies age for a while now. Due to a delay in finding a rental (see point 1) we’ve been forced to hop from one cheap hotel deal to the next and in one case in Surfers Paradise when we tried for an earlier check in via the phone, we were met with the great wall of distrust. The owner informed my wife that there would be a $100 security deposit required and cash up front before they handed over the keys, no ifs, no buts. He changed his tune pretty quickly when she asked for bedding arrangements for the kids and pointed out that no, the chance of him ending up with a goat in the room at any given time during our stay was pretty remote. From there he became Mr Happy and was more than accommodating, even moving us to a far better room when we found a moldy bowl tucked away in the corner of the kitchen (seriously kids, there was a dishwasher there and everything..) Now if we could just get confused for millionaires or something..

SUN AND STORMS


During the day it’s sunny and more often than not with our time here, occasionally you’ll cop a storm that will have you pondering your ark building skills. Last night it was the lightning and thunder show (with only a little rain) but the night before hammered down. Then the sun comes out stupidly early and pretends like the bad weather never happened. Which leads me to...

IT’S TOO EARLY, GO BACK TO BED



 As part of my training here yesterday I copped the early shift. Being put up in a room close to work I chose to stroll and walked past more people at 5:30am than I ever expected. People jogging, walking their dogs, taxi drivers happily chatting away, everyone up and bright and alert. I know what I’d rather be doing at 5:30am and it doesn’t usually involve going anywhere. Of course our beautiful almost 2 year Daughter has taken the bright like streaming through her room at stupid o clock as nature’s alarm clock and has come into our room to tell us about it every single day we’ve been here. It’s not all bad as it’s given us plenty of time to do whatever we like each morning when we get up shortly after...but zero energy by night time (which isn’t helping me with my new night job obviously..)

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