Renting in Canberra

I've actually moved out of my uncle's place a few weeks ago now. Since I've got a full time job, it was high time that I started being more independent. I'm currently renting a room in a fully furnished house with an Aussie family. The rent is AUD $200/week or around RM640/week (or RM33,280/year) which is inclusive of all bills; water, electricity, gas and internet. The price is average but you can probably find cheaper rents elsewhere. The main reason why I chose this place was because the house itself is clean and tidy unlike some of the other places I've checked out which were horrible.

My landlord is a pretty nice guy. He and his wife are really friendly and easy to get along with. And because the house is fully furnished, I didn't have to buy too much when I initially moved in here (apart from all the Asian pantry staples such as soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, wan ton noodles, mee suah, etc. and a rice cooker that is). And fortunately for me, my landlord doesn't mind me cooking up the typical Asian stir fry.

I've been cooking the usual stuff the past few weeks. Nothing really interesting. Had stir fry snow peas with prawns with lots of garlic, eggplant with minced beef, fried mee hoon, wan ton mee, fried egg with french beans, stir fried broccoli with beef slices, stir fried ginger beef and so on. I even cooked a steak one day on my landlord's bbq. Just did the basic salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, oil and red wine marinate and chuck it on the fire. Nothing too fancy.

Anyway, here are some pictures of my room:

 

My current place now is also pretty convenient as it is located quite close to the town centre where all the shops, supermarkets, banks, restaurants and fast food joints are located. It is also where I catch the bus every morning to get to work.

 

The yellow line is the route I normally take to get to the bus stop. It's about 850m or a 10 minute walk. The bus takes about half an hour from there to the city centre where my workplace is.

This place where I'm currently renting is also very near a lake (or a pond). The distance round the lake is roughly 4km. So what I normally do is I go for a jog either on Saturday or Sunday around the lake just to keep fit. I hardly have any time to jog during the weekdays because I normally get home late after work. But I'll be looking to jog more regularly during the Christmas break.

The red line is the path I take when I go for my once-a-week jog. I think the total distance is around 4.5 to about 5km which isn't too bad.

Here are some pictures of my 'neighbourhood':

The Town Centre is all the way down this road where the building with the little 'chimney' is.

The path on the way to the lake

The jogging path at the lake

It's very green with lots of trees and plants all around

The usual ducks and ducklings at the lake. You can see some black swans there sometimes. Some people also go there to fish. Not sure if they ever caught anything though. 

That's all for now. Will update again next time. Am going to be busy with work over the next two weeks running up to the Christmas break. Take care!