Alex

Hello!

Its been one year since I arrived in Australia!

How the time has flown… but looking back over this blog I realize I have actually managed to fit quite a bit in. Its funny how my plans have changed so much since arriving – if you look at the maps on the ‘The Rough Plan…’ page (link to the right) you’ll see I only planned to spend around 3-4 months just on the East Coast… and now I’ve just applied for my 2nd Year Visa!

It certainly has been a fantastic year, with some of the highlights being bumping around Fraser Island in a 4×4 and stumbling up to Lake Mackenzie – a place which looks like it could only exist in a brochure, having a lot of fun with great people in and around the clubs of Airlie Beach, and of course driving a quad bike at 80kmph along dusty tracks through a 1,000 acre banana plantation and coming home to a 40-50 person family. I wonder whats-a-coming this year…

As for my currently sedentary life here in Perth, all is well, although I now have a better understanding of how the early Americans killed off the Native Indians… what for me was just a slightly sore throat for a couple of hours has put poor Sooji to bed with a pile of tissues and a hot water bottle for the past two days! I keep telling her she’s got Swine flu but she doesn’t believe me. )

Our new-found friend in Freemantle

Work is so-so, it can be ok most days but unfortunately the old biddies that work there are grumpy, angry people and love to have a good bitch whenever something isn’t right – which would be fine and easy to let slide if they weren’t so often blatantly wrong in their outbursts. Sadly retaliatory comments just make the situation worse, it might shut them up for a while and make the others realise you’ve got a point, but they’ll just redouble their efforts in finding fault with you. Naturally, finding yourself pondering the perfect come-back line or genuinely wishing that that stomach problem you’ve heard so much about at lunch time kills her outright doesn’t lend itself to a harmonious working day.

No, on the whole it’s ok and the money is good, but having a laugh at work is so far out of the question that me and the only other sane person there, an Italian called Milos, are keeping a lookout for work elsewhere.

I know it’s been a while since my last blog post, around three weeks, but a part of that is that my loyal and much-troubled Acer Aspire One finally died completely. Or so I thought. I tried to revive it with a BIOS Update with no success, and decided to buy a new, full-size second hand one that I could then sell again in a years time. I was just on my way to the internet cafe to buy an adequate (but nothing to shout about) one when I thought I’d have a quick look in a local classified paper. There I found a sweet 4-month old Compaq Presario – dual-core 2.4ghz, 2GB RAM with a 500GB hard disk but what really sold it to me is the GeForce 512mb 8200M graphics card! I now have a sweet gaming machine to play with in the evenings while Sooji’s at work. ) Happy as Larry.

Minchang and Je-hi, a new couple, desperately trying not to spill sauce on their new, matching hoodies! )

The other day a couple of Sooji’s best friends, Je-hi and Minchang, picked us up and we went for an evening out to Freemantle. We wanted to go on a torch-lit tour of the old prison but it was closed, so we went to the fish and chip shop instead and had some ice creams afterwards. )

Well I hope your all well and have had a good summer, the ‘winter’ here has been a bit wet but I’ve been warned that it’ll be getting very hot soon enough. All the best for now, keep in touch, Al x

P.S. After much messing around my Aspire One has come to life again, so while I feel a little silly as I can’t justify having bought another laptop any more, Sooji is very happy.

Hello everyone!

I’ve finally got a job! The day after I started to seriously worry about my finances and even contemplated the flight back to Tully and hence banana land, I found a job through a local backpacker agency. I quickly went over to the office in town and was in a queue of 5 guys all applying for the same job. I overheard that it was out of town and that I’d have to live on site, and that along with the queue and the need for Sooji to live more centrally I lost heart and left the building. After walking a fair way I realised that I actually really needed a job and so turned around, got the phone number of the employer, gave him a ring and got the job! I found out later that he’d had 25 applicants and I had been the first! )
It’s an extremely physical job packing fruit in a giant shed just outside the city, and this last week has been exhausting! My body is simply not used to not only fast and constant but heavy work. I have to move hundreds upon hundreds of crates and tubs of apples, oranges and pears weighing between 15 and 20kg all day… adios my life of lazy luxury!

Where it all happens - trays get filled on the blue conveyors, moved to the roller and then stacked on individual pallets (out of shot)

Luckily I can commute out and get a lift from one of the guys from the train station so I’m still able to live in the city. I think that we’re now planning to stay in Perth for a while and save some money for a trip down to the idyllic Esperance, as well as for later travelling. For this reason we’re moving to a cheaper place (adios X-box and Plasma TV too…) on the train line to my work, which will mean I wont have to get up quite so early – perhaps 6.15 as opposed to 5.45! )
As is always the case with these things two days after I agreed to the packing job I got an offer of full time work in a café I had applied to a month before! Needless to say I regretted turning down the café work around an hour into my first day of stressful crate shifting! )

The pretty Scarborough beach

Last weekend we went to Scarborough Beach to the north of Perth which was really nice, although the water was around the same temperature as the Irish sea so we only got our ankles wet.
All in all its been a good couple of weeks, although having looked at the pictures of the Reggave and Shambala I feel like I have missed out on somethings and a little homesick. Not to worry, I’m sure there will be one next year – or possibly the year after, whenever I finally make it back to Blighty.
Hope your all well and keep in touch, Al x