The day I got news from my organization that I'll be going onsite to Melbourne for long term, I was on cloud 9. I started dreaming about living style of Aussies, culture, dollars I'll be earning etc. I even cancelled so many planned expenses like AC and Washing machine. You will definitely think that whats the big deal. If someone is going abroad for 1 year then buying AC worth 20k is nothing but stupidity. But here I would like to mention that the news was not confirmed. In IT industry, any travel news is not comfirmed till you reach the destination. Incidents have happened where employees were called back from airports. But as I was on 7th sky, I cancelled all the plans of such expenses or atleast posponed for a couple of months.
My instict clicked correctly and finally my tickets were booked. I decided to travel alone initially as I had to arange for accomodation and other petty stuff before my family (wife + 2 yrs old kid) could join me. I knew that finding a good accomodation will be tough. My flight landed at 7:30 PM. After all the formalities, I headed to get a taxi. One taxi driver met me at the exit of the airport and without wasting my time in getting the details, I settled in the taxi. Driver was a Turkey citizen. On the way we shared few things about our countries. To my surprise, he had totally anti-west mentality. He told me that Mahatama Gandhi was very famous in Turkey. And Gandhi was not given Nobel peace prize because Nobel prize belongs to west and Gandhi fought against western government. We kept on chatting on various topics and soon we reached the destination.
The hotel was old but comfortable. After such a long flight I can bet that even bench of any park in India would have given me comfortable feeling. I spent some time watching TV, unpacking some essential stuff and then fell asleep. As next day was Sunday, there was no need to get early in the morning. Sunday morning (after noon to be precise) I started exploring Melbourne. It was not very different than what I thought. Only few people on roads (compared to India), nice trams and trains, clean roads, hi-tech buildings etc were looking as nice as these could be. I found lot of Indians on the roads - talking in their regional languages. Other thing I could see across the road was Mc Donalds beautifully shining in red. The big smile of mascot was like welcoming a foregner in Australia. I found a small market near by. By this time it was 4:00PM. I gave a phone call to 1 of my friend who was living in Melbourne somewhere. To my surprise his apartment was at a walking distance from my hotel. Now I had something to do for rest of the day. Without wasting any time, I took the instructions on how to reach to his place and rushed. After good 20 min walk, I was outside his building.
My friend made me understand lot many things of Australia. Time flew so fast and soon sun proceeded to take a nap. Both of us cooked the dinner, watched TV and then I headed for my hotel. Next day both of us had to go our offices.
My first day was not something great but it was very nice. New place with old friend is something which can make any day the best day in the life.
