Paperwork

I’m in a bit of a quandary.  Either my photos of the cockroach-like bugs are terrible or no one really reads my blog.  I guess that’s not fair, perhaps the photos were excellent, but no one was able to determine what strange Australian species has been pestering me.  I’ve now had a total of three run-ins with the little buggers.  While the most recent encounter didn’t quite surpass the first surprise encounter is was a bit more disconcerting.  I was sitting on the lower bed (my room has two sets of bunkbeds) when I noticed one at my feet.  I was (of course) not wearing any footwear and as I leaned over to grab one of my trusty (and sturdy) flip-flops it scurried under the bed.  I quickly grasped the flip-flop and moved a safe distance from the bed before getting down on my knees to see where he had hidden.  I still don’t know if they can fly so it seemed best to keep my distance before moving in for the kill.  To my great dismay, he was nowhere to be seen.  There is only a bag with a container of rice and a box of laundry detergent under my bed, and he wasn’t hiding under or behind those (I checked, several times).  He had truly disappeared, and that was not a comfort.  It did seem to solve the mystery of how they’re getting into my room though, there’s apparently a hole somewhere in the floor or the wall.  There is a restaurant on the floor below me, so that would seem to verify my supposition that they are indeed cockroaches.  Anyway, I didn’t mean to write so much about these insufferable creatures, but I never did find him and definitely had more trouble than usual falling asleep that night knowing he could still be in the room.  I’m almost to the point where I feel like I should name them or something; it might make the story more interesting.
So today’s big news (the bug event was a few days ago), well, I’ll let you judge for yourself how “big” the news really is, but today I filled out the paperwork so that I can get my first paycheck!  I also set up my superannuation fund as well.  Retirement savings is compulsory in Australia, your employer has to contribute to a fund, well withhold money from your paycheck and deposit it in a fund; I don’t think they actually contribute.  Anyway, you can pick your own or your employer can pick one for you.  Since I’m not planning to live in Australia permanently I can close the fund after I return home and get the money back.  Since the current withholding is something like 9.5% of your pay, that’s a really good thing.  I guess the big news is that I did change my plane ticket and I’m now arriving home on March 6th.  I found out that my ticket expires on the 7thand I can’t change the route of the flight (fly home via Bali, Japan, or Fiji or something like that), so if I decide I want to visit another country before coming home I’ll have to do it before the 6th. Thankfully I only had to pay A$349 to change the ticket, there wasn’t a difference in the fare, so that was good news.  So, in another 6 months or so I'll be back in the good 'ol U.S. of A.