The meaning of Manchester

The lack of posts over the last week has mainly been due to me moving house.  I'm finally into a new place, my own place.  Its in the suburb of Lyneham, one of the more studenty districts, but the place is close to the suburb of Dickson and Dickson shops, a larger shopping area than most of the suburbs have, with an entire street of asian restaurants, multiple Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, Lao, Thai etc etc.  It even has three, yes three, different Vietnamese restautants.  Plus a host of Oriental Supermarkets.  Its much more bustling atmosphere than quiet family friendly Hackett kind of makes it the Cowley Road of Canberra, and its pretty much where I've ended up. (Not that its at all *like* Cowley Road but you get the idea).  I ended up making two huge (over $100 dollar) supermarket runs to get suitable food stocks, plus another to buy some Manchester! Manchester here is bedding, pillows, pillowcases, duvets (or dooners, or quilts), basically all bedroom linen and soft furnishings.

To go with my "Manchester" I've got a new mattress, which required the help of JB and his car just three days after leaving! It came from Kambah, a suburb thats outside of Inner North so a chance to take a look at one of Canberra's other "towns".  I didn't quite realise how spread out the eight or so towns that make up Canberra are.  Inner North, the one I'm in is spread-out, nicely spacious and low density, full of parks and wide verges, but its not overly spread-out.  Neither are the other towns, but the gaps between them make Canberra a really spread-out city and one you couldn't ever hope to traverse without a vehicle. You really can't see many buildings from the larger parkways that link these towns.  They could be, and to a certain extent are, completely separate entities.

Unfortunately the mattress stank of cigarette smoke. So far it has taken an entire bottle of fabreeze, and three days outside and the smell is beginning to fade.  Another bottle of fabreeze should do the trick, then I'll have a mattress that actually fits my new bed! I've been lucky in that JB and ES have loaned me some furniture, a bed and a desk that were sitting unused their garage, until they need it back.  If it weren't for this I'd be spending a serious amount of money at the moment.  I've still been spending loads, just not quite as much as I could have. Very few rooms in Canberra come furnished, which is frustrating, but it does mean that anything I do buy is mine for the full duration while I'm here, rather than face leaving stuff when moving house.  Makes life easier for landlords too I guess.

My shopping spree continued in Civic (the centre of both Inner North and Canberra as a whole), where I picked up all kinds of various bits and pieces you never normally think about, but are actually pretty necessary.  Things like clothes-hangers and a bin. I did get a nice fruit-bowl though! Plus I've finally got my replacement pair of jeans after ripping a brand new pair when I came off my bike last week.

Yet despite all this activity, its been a pretty boring weekend, all of my new housemates have been away at some point.  Its been a second successive three-day weekend, which would normally sound good, but when you've been doing as little work as I have in the intervening week is actually pretty pointless.  I now can't wait to get back to work tomorrow and get some stuff done.