I want an apartment (or a room) from September to December, so if I happen to find a suitable apartment somewhere and they need 6 months rent I'll let you know and perhaps we can timeshare :p

What area/price range are you looking for?

Maybe you can put an add in the classifieds, I think I saw a couple of places there sometimes where they will rent for short time periods.

@voltaire, I don't agree with getting rid of humans, machines are built by humans and can also have a lot of problems.

I'd rather have a machine that can be overruled by a human where necessary than one operating by itself.

For example: www.abc.net.au/[...]

I would suggest you sign up with the group class in a school such as Keats or another good school to get the visa and have some structure, but also do private lessons with a tutor who is not associated with a school for a couple of hours each day as well.

The schools are pretty expensive if you do one-on-one for an entire semester but if you look around a bit you could find a good private tutor cheaper since then they charge you directly rather than going through the school.

Ctrip's customer service is terrible. I haven't booked with them since they cut the last letter off my name on an international flight and then wouldn't change it unless I could somehow prove I'd typed it in correctly. However I guess they need to cut costs somehow or they wouldn't be as cheap as they are. I found elong much better.

Hello, hmm ok thank you :) I think I really need to learn how to use taobao