1:17 AM, Local Time

I can’t sleep. No, I haven’t had coffee or anything like that – I just can’t sleep. For me I’ve found that there are three reasons this happens to me. One is having caffeine too late in the day – I’m sure you’ve done this. Oops, one too many espressos too late in the day. Two is being excited about something so much that you just want it to happen right away. Maybe it’s an interview the next day, or a trip. You just get so excited that you can’t keep still and your mind is going 100 miles per hour. Third is similar to the second, except it’s not being excited about anything, it’s just that you have so much going through your mind. That is me right now.

So here I am, sitting in bed in my hotel room 8,000 miles away from home and those I love. It’s not that I’m second-guessing my decision to come here. It’s not that at all – I admit I’ve never been 100% about all this and I’ve just been going with what comes at me. In my opinion this is still a win-win opportunity for me. Perhaps it’s the reality that I will be living out of two suitcases and in hotel rooms for another three weeks. It’s one thing to do that as a vacation, but it’s another thing entirely to do that for business and already being two weeks into it. So today is Saturday now, my weekend. Today I do want to walk along the North Shore and get some pictures facing Sydney, the Harbour Bridge, and of course, the Opera House. I’d also like to walk across the bridge – it’s either a beautiful or god-awful structure depending on our point of view. After that, I’m not sure. I don’t have a car, and I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to rent one quite yet down here. Maybe I’ll just keep walking all day until the sun goes down – get a cab back to the hotel after that. Mmm, hotel. Then I suppose…

Okay, let’s face it. I think I’m bored with all this (already). I suppose if I had a place to live I’d feel much happier, but right now all I have is a place to stay. I am beginning to resent that quite a bit. Maybe it’s ironic that Australia used to be a prison country. I think it would be great to live and work in Australia, but right now I am just working here. M-F is a walking commute to work, or a conference, or an airplane, then back to the hotel to drop off my bag and then to a restaurant and most likely the bar. Okay, positive thoughts, positive thoughts – it’s the weekend! No work. It will be nice to walk around and be outside tomorrow, but when it all comes down to it I’m just in another city as I’d be in San Francisco, or New York, or even Phoenix. Today I got online to look for some flickr events that might be going on, as well as meetin to “meet” some people. Nothing. I suppose I could just go to the bar and strike up a conversation with someone, but that’s really not my style either.

My advice to anyone thinking about working/living abroad is to do your initial “familiarity” trip after your work-visa is approved. I have no set date of when mine will be approved, so inherently I don’t feel any of this is long term – I’m just on a long business trip right now. It’s really hard for me to look at apartments when I can’t seriously consider anything, and it’s really hard for me to think of myself living here when I don’t. Plus I still don’t feel supported by the company that wants me here.

This last week my phone stopped working, as did my boss’s phone. Why? Oh, somehow the bill didn’t get paid. Guess what? I was asked to pay it – still don’t know why (yes, it’s going to be fully reimbursed), but really, how do two remote sales people have their phone bill not paid? How does a $70MM company not pay two people’s mobile phone bills? How does no one get a call from the provider to follow up on the bill? My boss says it was the provider’s fault, but I don’t think so. I suppose just turning off the phones is how they let you know that a bill was skipped. Sounds reasonable.

Maybe I’m just complaining, but as I see this progressing I am being more uncomfortable than comfortable with the situation. Maybe I’ll feel better after this weekend.

2:09 AM. Still awake, but I’m going to play BrickBreaker on my Blackberry. Hopefully it works.