This post is a continuation of my personal #31DaysOfStoryWriting challenge in March 2021. This post will be dedicated to the second-week challenge which will tell my story about Australia based on my experience living there for two years. You can read my previous Indonesia story from here.
For those who don’t know yet, I’ll dedicate March 2021 as the revival month for my writing hobby. I’ll try to write a short story every day in this medium blog with this theme plans:
- 1–7 Mar (Indonesia stories)
- 8–14 Mar (Australia)
- 15–21 Mar (Estonia)
- 22–28 Mar (#Before30)
- 29–31 Mar (Wrap Up)
Day 14 — The Reason I’m Leaving Australia
During my last six months in Melbourne, I started to plan what I’m going to do next. The first plan is to continue my Master’s degree study in Australia, which leads me to come for some University Open Day, including the University of Melbourne, RMIT University, Swinburne University, Deakin University, Monash University. All universities mentioned were well-known and prestigious not only in Australia but also in the world. I’m enthusiastic and dreaming a lot about being an international student in those universities until, at a certain point, I find the reality that the tuition fee in those universities (and generally in Australian universities) was too high for me who’s not relying on money anymore to my parents. I’m not giving up and finding scholarship opportunities both from internal university and external funding such as LPDP, Australian Awards, or Endeavour Scholarship. I tried to consult with some education and migration agencies to get more information about studying and staying longer in Australia. In the end, I’ve got only from internal scholarship, which gave me a maximum 25% discount on tuition fee, but it still too high for me. Last but not least, I decided to move on from Australia, time to think about my future in Indonesia.
Leaving for good from Australia to Indonesia, around mid-November 2018, I spent one month of Bali holiday that led me to have a sabbatical month to reflect on what I have received and achieve until this stopping point of my life. I remember one enlightenment moment when I met pak Sandy Kusuma, an IT entrepreneur with a solld spiritual life. He told me about the bible reading (based on the Catholic liturgy calendar) on our birth date; it can lead us to what God wants for my life. Based on that curiosity, I started to find out what kind of “Bible reading” during my birth date using his own-made software. I found out it was from Matthew gospel chapter 28, which told about going around the world and bring joy to them. At that point, I thought it was an impossible mission as I don’t have much more money to travel around the world until I realize the opportunity to come to Europe.
From Bali to Jakarta, I spent most of the time learning Data Science, starting from being a teaching assistant with DQLab. The following month, I became a student for a three-month short course with Algoritma Data Science Academy. It was not a cheap investment to study a new field, which cost me almost half of my savings at that time. I doubt that I made a big mistake to spend that a lot of money on uncertain things. With that much money, I was supposed to build a new business. A few months later, I’ve got the ROI (Return of Investment), as I’ve got accepted as a Master’s degree student in Software Engineering in the most advanced digital society country in Europe, Estonia. I believe my study portfolio with Algoritma is one of the big points that the university admission decide to give me a chance to study here in Estonia. Long story short, this short story taught me about the spirit of never give up. As when one door closed, the other thousand doors will be opened for you, only if you keep looking for it.
Day 13 — A Brisbane Story
After the previous weekend getaway time in Adelaide and Hobart, I felt that the weekend trip was not enough to fully experience a new city. Based on that, I decided to do a full 7 days trip in order to get a better understanding of the city. As the result, I made a risky decision to resign from my full-time job at Google Melbourne Cafe earlier than six months period, because I want to fulfill my personal dream to explore every capital city of every state in Australia. Until this time, I’ve visited Sydney (NSW), Canberra (ACT), Darwin (NT), Melbourne (VIC), Adelaide (SA), and Hobart (TAS). 6 out of 8 capital cities accomplished and only two cities left, Brisbane (QLD) and Perth (WA). What an ego! But, when I’m thinking again about it, this is one of the egos that I didn’t have any regrets about it. Exploring every capital state in Australia is one of the best experiences for me to know Australian people and culture from many different perspectives, made me have no regrets when finally I’ll leave Australia “for good” in November 2018.
Brisbane is well-known as a “River City”, as the Brisbane river links together the inner-city precincts and is the most zig zag shaper river ever. This third-largest city in Australia is the top-destination during wintertime in Australia, as the weather is perfect, not too cold and not too hot. I spent some of my time, seeing people ride a bicycle around the city and the riverside, it was so peaceful just to sitting down near the bridge to enjoy the river stream. I also found an interesting video game arcade and bar named Netherworld, it’s so nostalgic when coming inside, felt like back the 80s-90s video game era. In the evening, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to take a beautiful view of Story Bridge.
Gold Coast is the entertainment city of Australia where the biggest theme park resides in this coastal city. From Brisbane, it only takes around 1 hour by train to get to Gold Coast. I visited Skypoint Observation Desk, to see the beauty of the Gold Coast from the high tower. The nightlife in this city is truly awesome. Surfers Paradise area is never quiet even until midnight time. I don’t want to miss the theme park experience, so I visited Sea World and Warner Bros Movie World and realized it awakens my childhood memories. I stayed on Gold Coast for the last three days during the Brisbane trip and definitely want to visit this place again when I’ve got a chance to come back to Australia.
Day 12 — Weekend Getaway in Adelaide and Hobart
Only two months left before my working holiday visa expired. In September 2018, while still working full-time in Google Melbourne Cafe, I decided to do a weekend getaway by looking for budget flights in Australia which are Jetstar and TigerAir. Booking the tickets around 1 month ahead, I can get a cheaper price both for flight and accommodations. I chose YHA Australia as a hostel place to stay in the two cities that I’ll visit, Adelaide (South Australia) and Hobart (Tasmania).
In Adelaide, I stayed in the YHA Adelaide Central hostel. I surprised by its interior, it was really cozy and comfortable. This also became my first experience staying in a hostel in a shared dormitory room. I met a lot of new backpacker friends from many different countries, learn to save budget for a meal by buying groceries and cooking at the hostel. I love the experience of staying at a backpacker hostel which leads me to many new adventures later. I didn’t do much exploration in Adelaide besides trying its city tram transportation system and a surprise meet up with fellow WHV friends from Indonesia, Winda and Yuna. We explore the city center together.
In Hobart, I also stay in the YHA Hobart hostel, but compared to Adelaide Central it’s much quieter. Probably it’s because I came not in the peak season, and luckily I can enjoy the 4-persons shared dormitory room only for myself staying there. The first day, I tried the ferry to go to MONA modern art museum in Hobart. It was a really unique experience visiting a museum by traveling by ferry before. This time, I decided to spend a fancy dinner at an Indonesian restaurant there named Dede. On Sunday morning, I visited Hobart’s Salamanca Market, and bought some local products for souvenirs. There is also a street musician who entertains us named @hugobladel. Trip to Hobart finished my weekend getaway experience :)
Day 11 — My Google Melbourne Story
I wrote quite a long story about my experience in Google Sydney but forgot to write another story about my follow-up work experience in Google Melbourne. But before that, let’s read the story before I got the second coming to Google office. For the first month when I’m living in Melbourne, I gave up my dream to get a job in the Melbourne video game industry as I found out that it’s not the right time for me. It leads me to a jobless state, mostly because I try to satisfy my ‘ego’ to become a part of the game development industry again. I learned how to give up my dream until I reached the point when I can bounce back to this industry later. Long story short, for the first six months I get the job back in the hospitality industry as a kitchen hand in two places, Pinnacle People and Mantra Group. Pinnacle People as the hospitality staff agency, gave me the opportunities to work in various big events in Melbourne including the Australian Open, Formula One Grand Prix, Melbourne Cup, and many more. Mantra Group gave me the opportunity to work in its Hotel kitchen. Both of them gave me different experiences compared to Sydney and Darwin, as I need to manage my time properly, sometimes working in the early morning, and until late at night. It became a combo challenge when I need to finish the job by late night, and coming back to work on tomorrow early morning in the far far away location, it happened once or twice, thankfully I passed that struggle time :)
Around April 2018, when I browse the job vacancy in SEEK (Australian Job Seeking website), and I saw a job advertising from Compass Group in Melbourne that saying about working for big IT companies. Through my intuition, I know it supposed to be Google, and directly I texted my Head Chef back in Google Sydney before, Chef Adrian. Thankfully, he replied to my message very quickly, and ask me in advance if I want to join the hospitality staff of the brand new Google Melbourne office. It’s a truly wonderful day for me, another dream comes true to see the brand new Google office in the second largest city of Australia. This is the work that I love when I’m not only working but find my second family in Melbourne that I always met from Monday to Friday every week. It also gave me full-time 38 hours 7 AM to 3 PM work time, I’ve got more free time in afternoon and flexibility on weekend. I can forget the crazy work hours time management that happened before. Thank you for the early team members, Chef Michael, Chef Siddarth, Shane, Rachel, and Vanessa.
Day 10 — Exploring Healesville Sanctuary
It’s the first day of the year 2018, and it’s not common to wake up so early after the festive new year’s eve, but it happened to me on this day. I decided to use this first holiday of the year to go to the farthest zoo in Melbourne, Healesville Sanctuary. It was a relaxing experience to write the first page of your yearbook with traveling, something that really precious on the current day. I really enjoyed the day trip by train, followed up with a bus to the zoo. The experience inside the zoo itself is amazing, most of the animals look happy and very peaceful.
Seeing the YouTube video above reminds made me regretful why I’m not recording more of my experiences during my working holiday in Australia. I will not try to do the same mistake here in Estonia, let me try to do some vlogs later.
Day 9— Unite Melbourne 2017
Timing is important. The first week I moved to Melbourne from Darwin in 2017, it’s the time for Melbourne International Games Week. There are several events related to video games and one event that I don’t want to miss is Unite Melbourne 2017, the conference for Unity game developer, one of the most widely used game engine in the world.
I spent three years working in video game company back in Jakarta using this ‘founded in Denmark’ game engine. It’s a full day event from morning until evening, in the biggest conference centre in Melbourne, MCEC. This game engine who just got an IPO on last September 2020, got a lot of new updates since past year I left the gamedev job. One of them is the AR/VR and Mixed Reality support for developers. There is also session about the importance of data science in order to improve the quality of your games. This leads me to get more interests in learning the sexiest job of the 21st century. Not only passive participation by just watching the presentation, I also got a chance to visit Unity Showcase, when I can playtest some games (mostly still in development) made with Unity. One of the notable game that already released is The Gardens Between which developed by Melbourne-based game developer, The Voxel Agents. I also got a chance to meet with some new people from industry and also Unity team, and this opportunity to meet in-person is a gem during this challenging year.
Day 8 — Day Trip to Grampians, Victoria
I realized that I haven’t write any story yet about my experience in Melbourne, Australia as I wrote before about Sydney and Darwin stories. Based on that reason, I’ll write more about Melbourne for the upcoming 7 days. Let’s start with the Grampians, one of the beautiful regions in the state of Victoria, Australia (Melbourne is the capital city of Victoria).
I moved to Melbourne in October 2017, after finished 4 months of outback work experience in Darwin, as a requirement for us (WHV subclass 462 holder), to get a second-year extension for our visa. Why I’m not going back to Sydney? I felt that Sydney already gave me quite a lot of experiences, and with one more year left for me to stay in Australia, I thought that it will be a regret if I’m not trying to live in the most liveable city in the world, Melbourne. Another reason is that this second largest city in Australia is also the creative hub of Australia and made me dream about working in a video game company in Melbourne. There are some notables names here such as Firemonkeys Studio, League of Geeks, Hipster Whale, Tantalus Media, even Nintendo Australia also have HQ in here.
In the first couple of weeks in Melbourne, I spent my free time joining the day trip community named “New To Melbourne”. They have an affordable price for a trip to many beautiful regions in Victoria, one of them is the Grampians. The tour guide also leads by young people who have a good experience exploring Victoria and on this Grampians trip. Using tour bus, we arrived at several stopping points, one of them is the MacKenzie Falls where we can enjoy the beauty of the waterfall along the MacKenzie River. I really missed waterfall a lot since living in Estonia, as there is no ‘real mountain’ here, Estonia is a flat country. The last stop is the famous ‘The Balconies’ which is the source of inspiration for studio Ghibli’s legend, Hayao Miyazaki, to make Princess Mononoke animation movie.
