Spring is well and truly here. There are showers occasionally, but they make a nice (and pleasantly brief) change from bouts of hot sun with fresh breezes. It's now that I am making the most of the park that lies just opposite our house. It's too easy to just pop across with a mat and a book and top up that Borneo tan. Then, as evening draws in and the fresh breeze becomes really rather chilly, I up sticks and head inside for a cup of tea with a housemate. Life is good - and I'm getting a lot of reading done again.

I am realising that my time here is approaching its end. This makes me enjoy each day that is left me all the more. And there are so many things I have yet to do! I'm visiting new bars, meeting new people, eating new foods, drinking new drinks, listening to new music, and generally having an awesome time of it. I shall truly miss Melbourne.

My last job was good fun in a way. It was just manipulating data in Excel, but it reminded me of all that I can do in an office environment - especially as I was doing the work in about a tenth of the time they were expecting it to take me! (If I'd known how little there was for me to do, I would have taken more time over it; I shot myself in the foot by being efficient because I ended up working less days than I was supposed to because they just totally ran out of menial tasks for me to do.)

The weird thing was that I was totally nervous about it the night before I started. I had fitful sleep - something that almost never happens to me - and was dreaming loads. Or perhaps it was the protein-rich dinner I'd had that night. But anyway, I am glad that the job turned out to be fun and not at all nightmarish.

I most enjoyed working in the City for a change. It meant I could go to loads of funky lunch places in town. It was a little strange to be in a suit & tie again; I felt like a bit of a cipher walking through the City surrounded by people in similar dress. But a bizarre sense of belonging also filled my mind. Uniforms are powerful tools.

This weekend I decided to get off my arse for a change and head out of the city. I really haven't visited enough of Melbourne's environs, so it was about time I went due south to explore a little of the Mornington Peninsula. I met up with James & Steven, a couple of friends of mine who live out in Frankston which is maybe an hour out of Melbourne, and we drove further south to the delightful little town of Mornington.

From the pretty seafront there you can just make out the skyscrapers of Melbourne's CBD on the hazy horizon, on the other side of the massive bay of Port Phillip Harbour - second in size only to Sydney Harbour in Australia. It's a proper little tourist town, with wall-to-wall cafes & restaurants and souvenir shops and things. I caught the train back into the city, and the sky clouded over ever more as I approached Flinders Street station. By the time I got out I thought it was going to rain, but it didn't quite happen.

On Friday night I went out with my housemates Kate & Kara, and sundry friends of theirs, for beers and a boogie. We ended up heading to Honkytonks, a well-established favourite nightclub in the CBD. It was a house music night with a famous (apparently; I wouldn't have known) DJ, and there was a $25 cover charge to get in. This was a little on the steep side, we thought, but luckily Kara's boyfriend Matai's housemate's girlfriend was on the door, and managed to get the ten of us in for a tenner each. To be brutally honest, I think even ten bucks is pricey for what it is inside. The decor is somewhat tired; the club has seen better days. And the crowd - supposedly very posy and trendy - didn't exude any kind of trendiness as far as I could tell. Or perhaps - horror of horrors - I have become just as trendy, if not more so. Hm, let's see. Erm, nah. I don't think so.