Here's a bizarre thing: duvets. You know how everyone has one, but you never actually see anyone buying the things? Well here in Melbourne I've been quietly astonished at the number of people I've seen dragging duvets around with them on the trams! What is more, these duvet buyers have all been ethnic Chinese. Either the Chinese community of Melbourne has a real thing about fresh bedding and the rest of us have really skanky duvets without realising it, or something even more mysterious is going on, the depths of which I shall seek to fathom in coming weeks.

Another week, another twist in the job story. Thinking I had a job that started on Wednesday, I was going to have a quiet one on Tuesday night, when I was due to meet up with Emily & Pete, the couple Dan & I met in Fiji. But then, at the close of play on Tuesday, I get a call from the telemarketing people to say that actually they don't have any work to give me, so I won't be needed for another month. Bollocks! Luckily, I was in a pub and with nice people, so I went straight into self-pitying commiseration mode and drank lots of tasty beers (mmm, Mountain Goat rocks!) and stuffed my face with a huge steak with garlic sauce, because I just don't care!

Aside from that, in the first part of this week I've been mostly doing cultural stuff, in the belief that when I have a full-time job I won't have time to do galleries during the week and I might be doing other stuff at weekends. So I've finished off the rest of the National Gallery of Victoria - including in their 20th Century Modern Media room a gross set of photos entitled 'Stretched Skin Through 360 Degrees' of a guy hanging at various angles from several thin ropes which are attached to him by huge fishhooks sunk into his skin and out again, with trails of blood pouring from some of the wounds.

Next door at the Arts Centre, there's currently an exhibition of some 160 of Kylie Minogue's 300-odd dresses. She, a Melburnian, has recently donated her wardrobe to the city, along with various items pertaining to her career as an entertainer - things like MTV Awards, platinum discs, and other knick-knacks she has picked up along the path of international divahood. I'm sorry to admit that I actually quite enjoyed the Behind-the-Scenes film of her recent 2002 World Tour. It is fascinating to see huge stages being built, and to see the person behind the personality (of course, the person we see on film is just another personality, but at least it's a different one).

Wednesday was a bit of a turning point for me. The disappointment of not having a job I thought I had - although tempered by a secret relief at not having to cold-call random people and try to get them to agree to something they didn't want in the first place - made me lose the plot somewhat. Back to square one again!

And as is so often the case, my mood cycles were in tune with the weather. Wednesday was just crap in my head because change was in the air: on Thursday we finally had the break in the hot spell that has been long overdue. From exactly midnight it rained for exactly twelve hours. I awoke to the gloom of a sky full of grey clouds, oozing not only raindrops but also foreboding, and oppressively sitting on the city, squashing the enthusiasm out of even the birdsong. But after my frustration and after the rain came a better spell and a new course of action. I did what in my heart of hearts I knew I should have done right from the start, and went visiting temping agencies in person.

I decided to call on three big ones to see what happened. The other 32 I had sent my CV to I kept in reserve for a possible second wave. The people at Adecco were friendly but too busy to deal with me straight away. The people at Hudson loved themselves too much and I am sure treat their clients like hunks of meat. The people at Select were friendly and immediately made an appointment for me to go in the next morning for an assessment.

Which I duly did on Friday, including an Occupational Health & Safety video (yawn), some computer tests (wahey, I can type 65 words a minute at 100% accuracy!) and a bit of a chat (my interviewer's parents are Croatian, and she spent six months in Europe last year). All we have to hope now is that she can find me some work...

I met up with Rainnie after work on Thursday. We had chai (thankfully not with soy milk though) in Smith Street and then we bought food & wine and cooked at hers. It was a chilly night, so I decided to do a carbonara pasta with lots of yummy cream. The deal was, Rainnie could go and have a shower to get all the tiny bits of metal out of her skin - occupational hazard for a blacksmith who spends most of the day welding - while I cooked. That suited me fine. We hooked up my MP3 player to a set of really tinny sounding naff speakers and spent the evening finding tunes we hadn't heard in ages.

I like Melbourne! There are so many cool bars and places to chill in. On Friday afternoon, after all my excitement at Select, I got a surprise call from Rainnie saying she had been given the afternoon off work, and did I want to have a coffee in town. This fitted perfectly with my utterly empty agenda, so we met up, did a spot of shopping (it's a Melbourne must) and then stopped in a really trendy grunge bar down a back alley that stank of piss (also SO Melbourne - the bar's location, not the piss smell). After a few beers there and elsewhere (so many places to choose from in this cool town!) we called it a night. I had to gather my energies for tomorrow's massage training.

And the training was SO cool as well! This week we got to work in pairs and do each other's backs. What in me was once precocious talent but lacking structure is fast becoming a professional touch: my massage diamond has gained new sparkle. Ooh yeah, baby! I am hot!