I haven’t updated anything in the last month for a few of reasons and I am glad I haven’t. It wouldn’t have been that much fun to read and surely wouldn’t have been fun to write and secondly, for much of that period I didn’t have a minute to spare. Now that I have sorted out my life and I am comfortably enjoying a relaxing, mildly hungover and surprisingly cool Boxing Day, I can put together the starts that I have begun in my journal and on my computer. Here are a few thing that I will hopefully catch up on in my week off between Christmas and New Years: Comestibles, the Queen, riding the train, Perth, baseball, the Footie grand final, burgers, Pinnacles, USA series, Americans, Baseball, meat pies and sausage rolls, kangaroos, Australians, Freemantle, Little Creatures, the view from the HSBC building, the weathers, the river, girls, girls, girls, Perth, Foo Fighters, the house, driving and my car, Cricket, the beach, and Steel.
Having a Winge
Have you ever wondered if you could be plopped down in a foreign place with no support net and see if you could make it? No? I recognize that I am one of few. Rooted in an affinity for stories like Into the Wild and Castaway and a twisted hunger for adventure and to challenge and prove my self-reliance, I have cultivated this question. It’s a fun hypothetical situation to chew on but it’s not one I had ever planned on testing. But be careful what you wish for or daydream about; you just might get it. I didn’t play out this scenario exactly, not even close, but I was close enough for me to get a taste and form an idea about how I would fare.
When I arrived in Perth I had $46 to my name. That buys nothing here. The club offered me a place to stay for three weeks but little else. I picked up the bartending job and it was fun and worked out fine until it became impossible to work until three, catch a cab home and then perform well at a mid morning baseball game the following day. At the same time as quitting the bartending job I had to find a new place to live. Without a car, I train and bussed to my casual catering job that just paying my rent and everything else going on credit. After all the prior traveling this year my credit debt was starting to add up. I needed a steady, good paying job and fast.
I pounded the pavement. I put in with several labor, well actually or labour, agencies and applied for anything and everything. I worked one day unpacking containers full of soft drinks and loading them onto pallets and I worked one week in a beer and wine distribution warehouse. This worked brought me slightly into the black but it wasn’t quite cutting it. At the end that week I got a call from one labor agency who said that had a job in a steel galvanizing factory. It would only pay $19.75 an hour (a very modest wage here) but the ninth hour would pay time and a half and after the ninth hour and weekends would pay double time. I had my doubts but after considering the reality of the situation it was time to grind.
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Having in a winge or winging are terms that I have happily adopted here that are equivalent to complaining and whining with the negative tone of “bitching” without the use of harsh language. This post has been substantially edited from the time that I began it in the middle of the hardest period here while, due to my economic circumstances, I was in a pretty bad mood.
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