1.21 Jigawatts!

In the end I got to quit Greenpeace about an hour before they could fire me! I didn't make the grand scene that I envisioned in my head, because despite the job not working out I really liked the people, but at least I stole a Greenpeace T-Shirt! The same morning before my final day at Greenpeace, I had an interview for the W hotel, which is now called the Blue hotel. When I went for the interview the lady said to me that they are owned by the Taj Mahal Hotel Group in India. Which really sounded impressive, but when I went on their website, it turns out that they own a hotel called the "Taj Mahal" in India and it has nothing to do with the real Taj Mahal in India! Not that impressive anymore. Mike has been working there for a week as a porter and I am going to start there on monday. It should be pretty good, get to park nice cars all day, carry peoples luggage, get walkie talkies with cool ear pieces and code names, and free lunch in their kitchen. Looks like this should be my last job in Australia before we travel at the end, so hopefully I can last more than a 8 days this time...The picture at the top was when we went with our roomate to fly his kite. Im in blue flying the kite and mike is in white lying on the ground after my mad sick kite flying skills knocked him on his coal mining ass.

The other day we woke up early to try and go surfing at sunrise. We got down to the beach while it was still dark, huddled up in our towels and waited for the sun to rise. What we didn't know was that the winds had brought in swarms of bluebottles. Feeling really chuffed with ourselves, we paddled out about a hundred feet when they first attacked. We lasted about 30 seconds out in the water before we were stung about 5 times and then swam in as hard as we could and ran straight to the showers on the beach. After that we watched about 5 other people try swimming and come running out of the water, which was funny when it happened to them...

Can't think of any other big news here. I plan on working for about 3 or 4 weeks at the hotel. Mike was saying that a lot of stars stay at the hotel and have been known to party with the staff. Apparently the Foo Fighters have partied there with other porters, so hopefully cool stuff like that happens while I am there. Mike and myself made deals on what cars we get to park in valet. I traded him a prius for an smart car, a subaru wrx for a mazda rx8, a 1992 buick century for an 1988 volvo station wagon, and the list goes on. Also I have never had so much fun watching the olympics before. Its really a lot better when you live with people from other countries and then the games get personal. Sometimes the celebrations get out of hand but its a great way to vent to frustration at our roomates. (this picture is from one of the barbies that we had at the beach)

The final picture is from the cliffs by the beach where we are staying. From where we are you can jump in the water and go snorkling...its really nice.

Greenpeace

I think in my last post i mentioned that I was going for the greenpeace interview. I have been working there for the past week as a fundraiser. Its not quite the same as the job I interviewed for before with the 3rd party company, but didn't take. For greenpeace, I work directly for them, so instead of 100% commision work, I get an hourly rate that gets better depending on the amount of sales that I make. The people and office as I expected were really cool and relaxed people and just about all vegetarians, I had to hide my lunches. The job basically consists of going off to a place somewhere in Sydney and standing out all day with a greenpeace T-shirt and trying to get people to sign up for donations. It is a hard job, even when you know that you are not going to make a sale you do anything you can just to get a reaction out of someone...normally for the worst. Anyway, Greenpeace expects you to raise about 8 dollars an hour for them...i made 2.60 an hour last week! so they are giving me one more day (tommorow) to prove myself, otherwise im gone. Mike and myself are trying to work out a funny way of quitting before they fire me, any input would be greatly appreciated. But, I'm sure that things will work out anyway because I have an interview tommorow as well to be a porter for a really fancy hotel. And worse comes to worse, I can just steal a cool Greenpeace T-shirt. (The picture at the top is all of the roomates. The 2 girls pulling faces are the swedes, other girl is the canadian and the 2 other guys are the damn frenchmen)

Other than the job front, not much has changed. We are both trying to save up money to spend the last month travelling up the east coast. Next weekend if the weather holds out we will go camping in the Blue mountains. They are about 2 hours away by train, and supposed to be grand canyonesque, just with a few more spiders and snakes : Surfing is still really hard, but fun. Sometimes it can be more dangerous than it looks. Mike was hit by another surfer and his leg got so swollen, I've had gallons of seawater pumped up my nose and been stung by a bluebottle jellyfish.

Vegemite sandwhich

Its really hard to get a good surfing picture because the amount of time that either of us is standing isnt that long and its hard to find you out there. But for now this is the best one of me. Not much, but i think im on my way to standing up in this one. Eventually maybe we will have a picture that actually proves that we can surf but in the meantime this is it. Now I'm working on getting up on the wave before it crashes and actually riding along the wave instead of being pushed infront by the whitewater...Both Mike and myself are getting so much better though, its actually starting to seem like more fun than hard work.

Still looking for a job. Lots of places don't seem to eager to hire travellers and places like KFC don't want to invest all of their extensive training in me...go figure. I'm going to stop talking about jobs because it seems like it jinxs things everytime expect that somehow I managed to get an interview for GREENPEACE (seriously). I signed up for their aquatic strike team, specializing in japanese whaling boats and texas owned south pacific oil rigs...

The picture beside this is the view from my bed in our room. Its really not all that bad, except for the bed bugs or whatever keeps on biting me in the middle of night. You can see our surfboard, which we keep over the drawers, mikes bed, my beach hat (the biggest one that i could find). Theres not really all that much else in the room except for our wicked stereo, which is my ipod and 20 dollar speakers, but it does the job. I dont know if its a Sydney thing but the air is so damp where we are that anything that you bring to the ocean, will never dry in our rooms. After a day the smell gets so bad, it can choke you. Our landlord is really annoying, stops by just about every night to tell us a story of his other houses where people are loud and how he kicks them out, or starts fixing something then just leaves it half done for a week until we remind him. Also unfortunatly, I cant see which way the toilet flushes because it just seems to go straight down, but i will investigate further. AND i tried vegemite, its really as vile as it looks and smells.Other than that, its really not that bad, got what we payed for so no complaints.

WARNING: Only for anyone that has spent more than about 12 hours in golftown. If your name isnt Dad, Terry, Hilton, Eli or even Justin (but recently i wonder...) you should turn back right now. You've been warned. I meant to write this down earlier, before i forgot. In Australia to determine your handicap, there are certain days where everyone going out has to play medal (ball in the hole). So its basically tournament play on that day, and after everyone has played what they do is take something like the 15th percentile and use that to figure out everyones handicaps who played that day. So no courses or tees for that matter have a slope rating, you just have to hope that you get out there on a day when everyone else sucks. The people that took me golfing the first week i was here said that handicaps in australia typically play harder than anywhere else ("i know a chap from SA who played off a 9 and when he got here he was a 12...is that a dingo", im pretty sure thats what they said). Thought it was a weird way of doing it, but it seems that most things here are weird anyways.

Can't think of something clever :|

As it turns out, I wasn't as qualified to work at Borders as I thought. The interview went well, even when they questioned me on the experience that I made up on my resume. Looked like I would have it, until they asked me about my VISA and that they needed someone a little more "long-term" than me...Back to hitting the pavement I guess.

People have been moving in and out of the house almost daily for the past week. Lost the german, gained a couple of french, almost had a swiss, but i guess she was dealt to another house for future draft considerations. All of a sudden I seem to be running into a lot of Israelis. Always very nice, inviting me to come meet their friends or telling me about dinners, after I tell them that I've been to Israel and I'm not just trying to start an argument with them. I guess they don't have the same luxury of sewing an Israeli flag on their packs, or attaching a Tim Hortons mug, as every Canadian abroad does.










To celebrate not getting another potential job, we bought a skim board. The basic idea is to run as fast as you can after a wave crashes on the beach, throw the board onto the inch of water, catch up to it and pray that you can stay on it long enough to "skim" across the water. Its a lot of fun, but after a day of screwing around on it, we both agreed that what its really called is a skin boarding because we both seem to be missing a large amount... Quickly on surfing: Both of us seem to be getting better now, no pictures to prove it yet, but hopefully soon. One thing that you learn quickly is how to spot a rip tide when your surfing. At first it was hard, but now we know to look for the spot where the waves never crash. Its pretty cool, because you can almost use it as a "chairlift" to pull you out to the "spot" (i like bunny ears). After you get past the terrifying feeling of being dragged out to sea, it helps a lot.

The price of my soul

I don't have my camera here so no new pictures of Mike doing cool things, whilst I take pictures like an idiot. But after weeks of campaigning to him to actually take pictures, he finally brings his camera out last night, takes a couple of pictures and the thing breaks. I dont think he was to impressed when I pointed out the irony...

I had the interview for the commision sales job on tuesday. Left to get there extra early, ended up arriving 45 minutes early and sat in the waiting room while i could here the other salespeople cheering as the boss got them pumped up (or was squishing puppies...really couldn't tell : ). From there I went for a trial with the team I would work with. We drove an hour outside of the city, to a small industrial area, where i watched her work her magic. I remember the exact point where I decided it wasnt for me was when she was about to drop me off for the 1.5 hour trainride back to the office to arrange for me to start work, when she told one of the girls on her team to go start a conversation with this random guy...and to talk softly. So creepy, I guess the huge commisions weren't worth the price of my soul. A formula 1 racecar on the other hand wouldn't be such a stretch. Just got out of an interview for "Borders", which is the Australian Chapters, to work in the inventory room. Probably the only job that I have worked, since Coop at school, that I am pretty confident that I am qualified for.

Back to surfing. I think the week and a half spent washing onto the beach has finally started to pay off. I can acutally paddle out through the waves now and even managed to fool a group of surfers into following me to a new area in the waves. It was funny because I was just trying to get away from the really big waves but I guess they figured that anyone as dark as me must be a local who knows what he was doing...suckers. Been starting to get up regularly, not exactly riding the wave but being pushed along by the whitewater. Not quite there yet, but at least I dont sulk have to lie on the beach and sulk anymore. Internet is about to expire and I will get more pictures on next time. Also, just found out that aussies love to make giant paper mache things, like lobsters and kangaroos, hollow them out and put stores inside of them...crazy.