Living in upside down land #3

ok, just to give you a bit of background, I'm sitting in an internet cafe, it's saturday, around six o'clock, I've a large Starbucks Coffee on the desk. Oh, and the man beside me has a parrot on his shoulder. A parrot. a F*cking PARROT! On his shoulder. and he's not even a pirate! (unless he's downloading illegal mp3s.)

#1 St. Patrick's night, & myself and Cian are sitting up late playing guitar. A Giant New Zealand Trucker comes to listen to us play, & gives us the following words of wisdom.
'yeah, if you're buying a gun, don't buy one with the serial numbers filed off. I bought a Glock, with the numbers filed off, found out it was used before, so I threw it out in the desert. Man, fuck, when I think what would have happened if I'd been caught with that thing....only cost me sixty-eight bucks, though.'

#1bis Two days later, I wander down, ready to go to work & bump into my friend, the Kiwi Trucker. 'Hey, Andy! I did it! I killed the possum last night! It took me three tries, but i got it, and i hit it with that stick and then it was crippled, and then, you know when it starts bleeding from the mouth that the brain is destroyed.'

#2 My boss & his wife were kicked out of the kitchen this week. I knew before they did that they were going to be given the axe. Happily enough, the new chef took me on. I went down to say goodbye to the old German boss as he was cleaning up.
-uh, hey.
-Don't worry Andy, you will be paid.
-um..no, I just wanted to thank you for taking me on.
-Well,I'm sure we can find something else for you.
-Thanks very much, but the new guy wants me to stay. Don't worry, I'll be just as clumsy for him as I was for you.
-...Andrew...no one ever said you were clumsy...

#3 So, Yeah, I have a new boss, and it's great, we get on well, he's a lot easier to get on with than old boss, the food is nicer & I'm learning a lot. But he also does a very funny thing. He vanishes for days on end. So I run the kitchen.
I'm not a chef, I'm just some guy. Some guy with an unnerring natural tendency for physical comedy. See me burn dockets accidentally in the gas ring, watch in amazement as I spill the unspillable, boil the unboilable, skate on previously spilt substance, precariously protecting valuable ingredients, only to add them to completely inappropriate dishes. Now, introduce Knives & Fire to the mix. Marvel at feats of unparallelled lunacy!

I am getting better at it all though.

#4 Monday, as we were changing over the kitchen, New Boss decided to run a barbecue on the front veranda of the hotel, just as a gimmick. (we're doing it tomorrow as well) Anyway, around three, a well dressed pretty woman in her thirties (think an older Tara Reid) comes in. She sits down, with a glass of wine, loudly arranges to meet someone on the phone & settles in with her magazine. Over the next 45 minutes, she dramatically breaks down, beginning with some slight tears, but moving on to full on sobbing & borderline hysterics. I get one of the girls I live with to go see if she's ok (i don't want to be mr. sleazy,just want to find out if there's anything i can do) , and apparently she's just having a really bad day. My boss mentions to me that she works in the brothel across the road.

The lady continues her breakdown for another hour or so, just me and her on the verandah, and to be honest, it's getting a little awkward. She's getting more dramatic, taking out her phone, and crumbling into a sobbing mess. She comes up to me to borrow some napkins.
-Hi, can I borrow some napkins, please darling?
-uh, of course...um, listen, are you ok, can I get anything for you, or call anyone?
Her demeanour instantly changes, she flutters her eyes.
-you could buy me a drink...

you can't win.
(just so as you know, i said i was working, and that i'd love to maybe another time, but that i hope it all works out for her)

Oldies but goldies...

ok, so since most of what we're (well, me) are up to here in Oz-terr-alia revolves around working, getting ready for work, watching television, having a few beers after television, rinsing, repeating, I'll try and spice up the old blog with a few of the odder antics we got up to pre-australia, which, due to (and isn't this a long sentence!) one reason or another weren't covered here before.

#1 - we get tricked into teaching primary school english...

So you know when you wake up? and you're in a tiny Thai town, the name of which completely eludes you, but you can see the bridge over the river kwai from the window of your floating bungalow/shack? And you've spent the night before on a mad dash around the town with a canadian lesbian looking for bad live music? Yeah?

Well then you'll know that at 8 in the morning you're due to head off on a bike ride with a local guide. Anyway, what you mightn't know is that this guide will unexpectedly lead you into a school, get you to park your bikes & introduce you to a class of 7-9 year olds, and get you to teach them english.

You won't have a clue what to do, and will end up sitting on the floor, surrounded by hysterical thai children who can only say 'I am seven (or nine) years old!' They'll say this over and over again, increasing in pitch and volume, until you will not know just what the hell is going on. This will not help the pain in your head. You decide it will be fun to do animal noises (hey, it seems to make them laugh), and rather than teach them english, you will teach them what donkeys, lions and crows say. They'll do this. lots.

You're welcome, teacher who has to take that class back afterwards!

More Later...

Living in upside-down land #2

#1

My boss' wife:
'Andy, this is a silent kitchen. Do you know what that means? No singing, no humming, no music.'

'No, I know we haven't paid you for three weeks, but that's really your problem, you know when I sign off on your pay in here I'm not really paying attention'

'When was the last time you called your mother?'

#2

The man in front of me on the bus drops something out of his bag. I reach down to pick it up, in doing so, I realise it is a pair of tights.

-'uh, you dropped your..um...stuff'
-'oh, yes, my tights...do you like them? they're great to bite through'
(the man mimes biting through tights)
-'yeah...i guess so'
-'Would you like to bite through my tights?...I'd like you to bite through them.'
-'um...thanks, but...ah, no'

I always knew I had a cult gay following.

#3

My break falls around the time Moonlighting is rerun on Channel 7. I've become evangelical about the programme, forcing everyone in the living room between 3 & 4 everyday to watch.

ok, so maybe this phase of the trip is less action-packed.

#4

Observation. The employees of the establishment over the road all have great names. 'Miss Honey', Tikki, Nikki, Jem, Jazz. I wonder why they never pick names like Eleanor, or Sarah-Jane.

Working Life

So I'm staying in Sydney for a while to make some cash.

Straight off, thanks to my market research experience (thanks MORI!), I got a job at Woolcott Research. This turned out to be almost identical to my job at MORI except that my office is located just across the road from Sydney Harbour Bridge here, and the MORI office is located just across the road from some kind of warehouse (that's not even a little bit famous).

But, money hungry thing that I am, I have decided that I need more work, more hours, more money.

Now I could have put an effort into finding an office job, but I have heard from some people that there is money to be made in traffic controlling...

I had to do two courses to get the relevant certificates to apply for traffic controlling jobs. I did these last Thursday and Friday in a little shed/classroom in Lidcombe, a suburb of Sydney. The first day was taken up with getting my "green" card - a health and safety card all construction workers must have. All guys bar this little bunch of Irish girls, who have obviously also heard about the money to be made! That day we learned all about health and safety on work sites, and at the end of the day I completed a test by pretending I was tiling a roof, stating the hazards and saying how I would make sure everything went ok.

The next day it got funnier. We were back in the shed/classroom learning the specifics this time of traffic controlling. The day was kind of structured by a training video.....with its star, a young Russell Crowe! I thought that was going to be the highlight, but no, there was more to come.

The end of the day arrived, and with it our test. Picture us, decked our in hi-vis jackets holding up a baton with Stop written on one side and Slow on another. Naturally we needed some traffic to practice on. So our instructor spent about an hour going up and down the sideroad on a red scooter, while we practised our procedures!

So now I just have to find the work. However, apparently there isn't much of it around now because it's been raining lately (construction workers knock off as soon as it starts to rain here!) If I do get the gig, I get to buy steel-capped boots, wear the full regalia (neon trousers and jacket....and hard hat!) and do an impression of being a council worker!

But I reckon it'll be a better memory than an office job.....