It's a holiday in Glen Waverley...
Due to a long weekend of intensive rail works taking place directly adjacent to our house, we took up the LXRA offer of “relocation accommodation,” and this time made sure it was somewhere other than an apartment directly on the Dandenong road/Warrigal road intersection – which had turned out to be drag-racing central at night, and heavy traffic starting around dawn.
Over the weekend we alternated between a few hours at home doing the household things we required, and the rest of the time as far away as possible from the pumper truck’s howling pump and assorted digging machinery beeping, clanking and digging. Accommodation was on the sixth floor of the Ikon apartments in Glen Waverley, overlooking the Glen Waverley train station, but with no trains this weekend as that line had also shut down for three days.
A strange mix of relaxing and annoying; we had no railway noises overnight while we slept, but the apartment was filled with a loud pervasive humming the entire time. Almost as loud as being on an aircraft, we found we had to sleep with earplugs in. Oddly, although it sounded like air-conditioning, we didn’t have airconditioning so it must have been from plumbing, or some central ventilation or gas hot water systems.
Other oddities were a main bedroom with a bedside table and lamp on only one side of the bed, a shower and bathroom with no shelves or place to put soap other than on the floor, and a complete absence of storage to put our bags or clothes other than, again, on the floor. Oh, and the clearance around the toilet meant that anyone larger than a female size 8 would have hips or shoulders or both crammed against walls and sink.
So definitely a few steps up from the last time where we had overnight Dandenong road drag racers and 5 am traffic to listen to, but again, it had its quirks.
One other interesting thing were the instructions for gaining access; these were impeccable and involved a PIN for the external door, going up to an unmanned office, a PIN for the office door, a different PIN to get our key from an automatic key safe, then back downstairs to the lifts to get to our room. Offices on three floors, then apartments from 6..13. No floor four for an apartment block in Glen Waverley, and no interaction with another human required.
