He has a massive DVD collection and I love browsing through and picking out my favourites, especially the English comedies. I just love The Mighty Boosh, Black Books and The IT Crowd. (I actually met Dylan Moran at the Gin Palace in Melbourne about two years ago and he was exactly like Bernard Black in real life.)

My boyfriend recently got me hooked on How I Met Your Mother and I am absolutely obsessed with watching it! I never watched it when it was on TV, but now I could watch it for hours and hours and never get sick of it.

Jason Segel is one of my all time favourite actors. I have a dodgy DVD from 2002, that I bought because it had Devon Sawa in it, called Slackers and I think that's where my love for him started. That love fully blossomed when I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the movies, not once, not twice, but three times. As the lovable Marshall in HIMYM, Segal firmly cemented a place in my heart.

But it got me thinking about How I Moved to Ballarat.

As an aspiring journalist, my prospects as a fresh uni graduate seemed bleak. I was a realist and knew that if I wanted to get anywhere as a writer I would have to move. Although I am an impassioned Melburnian, I knew that I would have to be strong and leave the McMansion. It was a scary thought!

I originally interviewed for a position at The Courier in November. I was desperately keen. I loved the place when I was on work experience and all the people I'd met were lovely. Alas, the position was changed to a sub-editor's role (which I was not ready or qualified for) so I decided to widen the scope and see what I could find.

I applied for a role as an events co-ordinator for an Australian diplomat in New York. It is my dream to move to New York and spend at least a year there so I thought this could be my big break. I never got a reply.

I also applied for countless jobs within the Fairfax Network in NSW. Interestingly, when I went on cadet camp a few months ago I met the people who currently work in the jobs I applied for.

One place that replied to my resume was a small, weekly paper in Border Town.

Ah Border Town. The population hovers around the 2500 mark and its one claim to fame is being the birthplace of former prime minister of Australia, Bob Hawke. Trains to Border Town run every second day, with a return train to Melbourne running on the alternative day.

My trip to Border Town was epic, to say the least. My former boyfriend and I rose when it was still dark and trekked out to Spencer St Station (let it be known all true Melburnians still call it Spencer St). We sat in the cold, sipping coffees, waiting for my train to arrive and giggling at all the women in gorgeous business suits wearing sneakers because they can't walk to work in the morning in heels.

Finally the train arrived and laden with magazines and snacks I boarded the train to my potential destiny. It was a six-hour trip and being the chatty girl I am I managed to make friends with a fellow traveller and sat with him for most of the trip.

I was just over an hour out of Melbourne when Angela Carey, editor of The Courier rang me. Lo and behold a job had opened up and the general manager of the paper wanted to meet with me. She urged me to get off the train but I was already in the middle of nowhere on a one-way train to Adelaide with no way of getting home if I got off. Plus the editor's assistant from the Border Town paper was coming to pick me up from the station and I didn't have a phone number for her.

So, being the trooper that I am, bubbling with excitement at the prospect of a job in Ballarat, I continued on my journey, curious to see what Border Town would hold in store for me.

The town was tiny and dusty and hot. It was early December and the mercury must have hit at least 40C. My carefully planned interview outfit stuck to my skin within a matter of minutes and my sleek, brown hair acquired a fine coat of red dust. I knew in a heartbeat I could never live in this one-horse-town (there wasn't a single op-shop in sight!).

I completed the interview and was charming and witty, but the sweltering office was only cooled by two ancient fans and later when I flipped through the paper and saw it filled with farming reports and stories about the local CWA, I knew the job wasn't for me.

That night I sat alone in my teeny, tiny hotel room. I had a sausage roll for dinner and a few glasses of wine as I watched TV and sobbed on the phone to my mother about how I much wanted to be a journalist but couldn't imagine myself living in this dusty, old town.

Little did I know, the hotel was used by the big, burly blokes working the mines in the area. Down the end of the corridor was a communal bathroom.

Late that night, I snuck down to use the toilet. I waited until it was quiet and tip-toed down the hall. Outside the rooms were pairs of massive, muddy boots that I assumed the hotel must clean for the men overnight. Just then one of the doors swung open and a tanned, muscly older man loomed in the doorway. I squeaked and hurried back to my room, but he just laughed. He was completely harmless and I'd given him more of a shock than he gave me.

The next morning the stranger in the hallway winked at me at breakfast.

They weren't bad blokes. They just weren't used to having young women wandering the halls in the night.

The next day my train pulled into the station and I boarded gleefully. It was time to go home! I collapsed into my seat and noticed there were more people on the train going to Melbourne than the one I caught yesterday going to Adelaide. I thought it must be a sign that I was not meant to move to South Australia.

And it wasn't.

I drove up to Ballarat that week, met all the head honchos at The Courier and signed my contract. Within a few weeks I'd packed up my minimal belongings and truckloads of clothes and set up shop in my new house.

I heard back from the paper at Border Town weeks later. On Christmas Day actually. They sent me an email to tell me that I had been unfortunately unsuccessful but that they would keep me in mind for the future.

Looking back I don't know what's sadder. Me not getting the job, or me checking my emails on Christmas Day.