Down Under Adventures

Post Christmas

2008-05-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

Southbank City Beach. The water you can see in the background is the Brisbane River.

A very strange but cool sight with the buildings and beach.

The after Christmas period was a very poor time for me. I sort of miscalculated my pay and forgot that I was paid a week behind leaving me with not much left of the money I had saved coming into Christmas to live on for that week. Thanks mostly to 2 minute noodles though I somehow managed to survive. I went back to work the Tuesday after new years on day shift as opposed to the afternoon/night shift I was used to working. This turned out to be a negative for two reasons; first, I had a drop in pay and second, I was now restricted to calling home only on the weekends as the (Australian) morning is the only time that both countries are awake. Bummer. I was told that it was only supposed to be for the first week but it ended up being a permanent switch. I still was enjoying the people that I was working with though and truth be told, the work on the day shift was quite a bit easier. I was more or less expecting the weather to completely change (read: stop raining) once I started back at work as is usually the case, but we weren’t even that lucky. It just kept right on raining. Sure a couple weekends it wasn’t and we went to spend the day at Surfer’s Paradise, but I’m looking for sympathy here and I’m sure if I talked about that I wouldn’t really be getting much. Any day that it wasn’t raining the sun was really strong. I mean really strong. I’m sure not many people reading this have felt totally unfiltered sunlight before. Because one of the biggest holes in the ozone layer is right over south east Queensland the sun is, at times, unbearable. You can feel your skin burning the moment it comes in contact with the sun. There is no forgetting to put sunscreen on because the sun reminds you right away. So my weekends were spent usually either at Southbank City Beach or Surfer’s Paradise depending on who wanted to go and when. Unless it was raining - the beach is a lot less fun in the rain we have found. So, life sort of bumped along like that for a couple of weeks until one day I arrived home from work and was greeted by our landlord telling us that we all had one week to pack up our stuff and find another place to live. He had no real reason other than he said that we were not respecting the place. I have no idea how he got that idea as everyone did more than their share of cleaning and helping to fix up the place and very little got broken or damaged excluding a window from a water balloon that I threw. But, come on! When has a water balloon ever broken a window before? I didn’t even throw it hard. Plus, I paid for it in full and in a timely matter (part of the money miscalculation I was speaking of earlier). So I don’t think that one incident should count. We found out a little bit later that the week after we moved out he filled the place back up with different backpackers and charged them $20 more rent per week than us. A real nice guy. Because of my financial situation at the time my only option was to move back into the hostel, which everyone else in the house did too. It was kind of fun moving back in there with the housemates but at the same time we were all pretty bitter about the whole thing and didn’t really feel like meeting anyone new. A little snobbish maybe but we had just moved out of a beautiful house and back into a dirty hostel. Once again life stabilized for me there for a few weeks and that is where I will leave it for this installment.
I hope it gets warm for you guys soon,

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

2008-03-30T22:48:00.000-07:00

This was our view of the firworks. Note the umbrellas.

I should probably explain that around Christmas just about everything shuts down for three weeks. Well, all the shops and restaurants stay open but that’s about it. So for three weeks I wasn’t working just hanging out at the house. The weather was terrible for the three weeks so I wasn’t able to go on any trips or do anything touristy that I wanted to do. After new years, Rob, a friend of mine, and I tried to plan a camping trip to Moreton Island, one of the islands off the coast of Brisbane. As keen as we were we were unable to go because it rained solidly from Christmas up until when I went back to work one week after new years. Moreton Island was even evacuated because of multiple cyclones that hit around Brisbane in the space of one week. Like I said, the weather was bad. New Years was a pretty lame edition for me. The initial plan was to have some drinks at the house then head out to Southbank to watch the fireworks and then head back to some friends’ place to finish partying. What actually ended up happening was rain all day leading up to the fireworks. I don’t remember who but one of the housemates heard that because of the rain, the fireworks were cancelled which threw a major stick in our plans. We decided just to spend the night at our place, watch the fireworks from Sydney on TV an hour later (because NSW has daylight saving and Queensland doesn’t) and then, if we felt like it, head down to the other party. Well, at 11:30 we got a call from another friend saying that the fireworks were obviously a go and why weren’t we in Southbank to watch them? Well plan change #3; we ran up to a little park close to us and by the river where we could just barely see the fireworks behind the Story Bridge. And yes, it was raining. Pretty lackluster I have to say. After that we decided not to go back and watch the Sydney fireworks at our place and instead just head straight to the next party (less time spent walking in the rain…) Once we got there everyone started playing drinking games and pretty much drinking more than they should, me included. This is probably why I don’t have too many details from the party to discuss and the ones I do are best left to the imagination. I will just say it was a fun night once we got out of the rain and everyone lived through it somehow. Because of the time that New years eve finally finished not much happened on new years day. And being raining again, everyone just had a lazy day around the house. Rob and I were looking forward to the camping on Moreton Island with all the sand and nice water for swimming that we had heard about. Yet another plan was thrown away due to the rain. It rained solidly from Boxing Day until I went back to work the Tuesday after new years. That sort of foiled any plans to do anything fun and exciting. We pretty much spent the days inside and went out a lot to the restaurants, bars and clubs close to our house. It was pretty fun but ultimately not very exciting and very expensive. So I ended my three weeks of Christmas holidays without having done much touristy and poor. That may make it sound negative, but I really did have a lot of fun hanging out with all my friend/ housemates eating and drinking well. It was just a very different holiday season for me and I think I enjoy it better back home.
Until next time,

Christmas in July (like temperatures)

2008-03-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

Oh ya, that's Christmas alright

Our Christmas feast
Our little Christmas tree

Ok, so I know that I always start my blogs by “wow, I really haven’t updated in a long time” but I think this time it is actually true. If anyone is still checking this, yes, I am still alive and healthy. The problem with letting so long pass in between entries is that even I don’t really remember what I did so it makes it hard to pass along to you guys who are living in the warm climate of Australia vicariously through me difficult. (Run on sentence? Maybe.)
So Christmas was fun but really not the same. Christmas eve almost everyone in the house was working so I pretty much just hung out on my own, had a beer and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. I figured I had to watch some sort of Christmas special and I had never seen it before, plus it was on sale at Target. It is really difficult to get into the Christmas mood when it is 30degrees with long summer days. I’ll put in a picture that I took in Surfer’s Paradise to show this point. Giant Christmas trees, palm trees and bike racing really make a strange mix. Christmas day was lots of fun. I woke up early in the morning as always on Christmas morning and jumped on Gaelle and Celine’s beds to wake them up. They were sooo pleased. Then we headed down to the Charlie Brown-esque Christmas tree and opened our airmail boxes. Gaelle, Celine and I also exchanged gifts with a $15 cap just to enhance the Christmas spirit. After that I’m not really too sure what the others got up to but I hopped on a train down to the Gold Coast. Kevin and Estelle had invited me for Christmas brunch/lunch which is the traditional time for the big meal. I was explained that it is because Christmas day is historically one of the hottest days of the year and it is too much to have the oven running all day – so they have a cool lunch. And what a lunch it was! There was plenty of everything. Different types of salads, cold turkey, 2 types of pork and fresh prawns. Prawns are kind of like shrimp but roughly three times the size and twice as delicious. Sort of like little lobsters, you have to crack the upper body off and eat the tail. Everything was so delicious and I was seriously full after my 4th plate. I hung around for a little bit and had some beers and chatted with everyone but then, unfortunately, had to head back up to Brissy. All of us housemates had a big night planned. Everyone signed up to make a different dish so we would have a big Christmas dinner. I signed up to make Mexican dip as well as crab dip both of which always go over well. I had prepared them both Christmas Eve so I only had to heat up the crab dip and I was set. Our landlord had promised us that we would have a kitchen by Christmas, but it really didn’t look like that was going to shape up so we bought some bbq chickens beforehand. Christmas day he came over and told us that we could just lift the stove into place and plug it in. Thanks for that, we could have had an oven this whole time if installing the stove was just us lifting it into the hole and plugging it in. It turned out later that it really wasn’t that easy as the girl who signed up for making potato casserole couldn’t get the oven to go over 180deg without the power in the entire house going out. Excellent. The neighbors graciously allowed her’s and a few other’s dishes to be cooked in their (working) oven. We heated up the bbq chickens in the microwave and everything wasn’t ruined and we managed to have a really nice dinner which included more wine than we needed. It was a very strange Christmas for me but it was nice. I think if I am still in Australia next Christmas I will try to get home. Christmas just isn’t Christmas without family and friends.
I know I am well behind in my updates but I will hopefully try to catch up now.
Miss you all,

My New House

2008-01-15T00:11:00.000-08:00

Front of our house

The back yard

I have realized that I am addicted to the beach. The first couple of weeks staying at the hostel I went back on the weekends to visit Mellen, Bendon, Kevin and Estelle and then head to the beach so that fed the addiction. Then the third weekend I skipped my trip to go to the beach and I was in a terrible mood all week as I went through beach withdrawal. The weekend after I went back and feel a lot better now. The beach is a great place and you always feel better after spending some time in the sun, on the sand and in the waves. It is really rejuvenating. My life has become pretty scripted living at the hostel. During the week I wake up hang out go to work, come home have a shower and go to sleep. The weekends I am pretty lazy. If I am not going to the beach I hang around the hostel. Hanging in the hammock reading a book is my favorite spot. But reading the newspaper and talking to the other residents at the picnic table is also a pretty good place to be. I have been fairly lucky with my roommates so far. There are 3 people in my 6 person room who are there for an extended stay. These people are fairly quiet and considerate of others so there really isn’t much trouble. Because I am living in a 6 person room that means there are really only 2 people switching in and out. We have had a few snorers and a few people who come in late at night drunk and make a lot of noise but most of them have been ok too. I was starting to get restless living at the hostel though. It was really fun and a great way to meet people but there comes a time when you want to live in a place where the kitchen is open all the time and you don’t have to share a single kitchen with 50 other people. Lucky for me just around this time I was hearing rumors that one of the guys who worked at the hostel had some apartments and a house that he was renting out. The apartments were just at the bottom of the hill where the grocery store was and the house was just around the corner from the hostel so I knew moving wasn’t going to be a trouble. I went to talk with Andy and he said for sure there was room for me. I decided that the house sounded more to my liking so I put my name in there. He only wants responsible people who are going to take care of the place living there - I am clearly a choice candidate. The house is not finished but he said we can still move in if we want to. This sounded good to me because it was only $5 a week more expensive than the hostel but much more luxurious and I would only have to share my room with a maximum of 2 other people. So the next week I forgot to book into the hostel for the week after and because the hostel was fully booked I had no choice but to move into the house as my bed was let out from under me. The apartments weren’t ready anyways even if I wanted to move into them which I didn’t so everything worked out ok. When I moved in there was only one other couple living in the house. They both had early morning jobs and with my afternoon evening job it made living in this giant house pretty lonely. A few days later the people started to move in. By the end of the week I was returning home from work to a party outside in the garden with people who were staying at the house and friends from the hostel and people who weren’t really staying at the house but were staying at the house. At this point here was no electricity on the upstairs floor except the one light in my bathroom that never went out. (I picked the room with the on suite bathroom and walk-in closet - score!) Having light in the room or not was decided by opening or closing the bathroom door. Our kitchen also consisted of a Gorge Foreman grill, a toaster and an electric frying pan. Luckily for me with eating dinner at work I didn’t do much dinner cooking. The landlord sort of caught wind that there were people sleeping everywhere in the house without paying and had to crack down on it. It was pretty funny, for a while it was the first ones to go to bed who got mattresses because there weren’t enough to go around and people trying to sleep on box springs and in the kitchen. No one put up a tent on our patio but I think that is only because it wasn’t raining. Needless to say I was much less lonely. I never got my mattress stolen either because I had been there for a while so I was the only one with sheets and I think that acted as a bit of a deterrent to the mattress thieves. Slowly less and less people were staying over and the faulty wiring upstairs was fixed. This house is beautiful. It is a giant old house. It has a balcony that runs around three sides of the house, a pool, and nice interlocking brick garden area with a gazebo and big old palm trees everywhere. The rooms inside are really big too. As people moved in my room was the first to fill up (obviously because of the bathroom and closet plus the awesome roommate). At one point we had four in the room but I though that it was pretty cramped. Before I could bring that up with Andy, our landlord, he and one of the girls had a falling out and she was asked to find other accommodation and I simply moved her mattress into another room and that problem was solved. So now I am roommates with two really nice French girls. I don’t know what you are thinking but if it’s something above PG-13 you’ve got it all wrong. The both have boyfriends and we get along like siblings, which makes things a lot easier when staying in the same room. Gaelle is from Lyon and Celine is from Grenoble. I especially get along well with Gaelle we have the same sarcastic sense of humor and have had similar schedules so we have had a lot of time to get to know one another. Across the hall is a weird Dutch guy named Stephane who sometimes prefers to sleep in the back of his Toyota LandCruiser than in his bed – weirdo. Down the hall is a really funny German guy named Chris who has a Canadian girlfriend from Kalona who is usually hanging around and is really nice. It’s fun to talk to someone who has the same accent and uses the same words as you for a change from time to time. Across from him is Aaron who is from New Zealand and is deaf and like 12ft. tall. Downstairs are the couple of Andy and Monika. Andy is from England and Monika is German. They are a very rock and roll couple who are fun to be around but kind of scary when they get into arguments. And that is my house. We all get along really well and have a lot of fun and usually on the weekends go out to the bars all together. That is actually untrue. Aaron doesn’t usually join us and makes it his personal mission to inform the landlord every time something bad happens in the house. He is starting to grate on the rest of us. Other than that though it is great and Aaron, over time, is slowly loosening up. It is a very fun dynamic with lots of different accents and levels of English comprehension. There is a lot of explaining and one person translating for others when they still don’t understand. It’s a fun place to live for the moment and nice to get out of the hostel. I am working on an update for Christmas and new years as we speak and then I think my blog should be just about up to date. Sorry for all the reading with this one but there was a lot to catch up and lots to talk about it seems. I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and a great new years.
Ciao,

Living in the Hostel

2007-12-21T22:57:00.000-08:00

My first Monday in Brisbane I knew that I needed to start looking for work pretty quickly. I had watched my account balance slowly dive during my stay on the gold cost - definitely worth it though but it was time to start working. I had talked pretty seriously to a guy working at an employment agency when I was on the gold cost so I figured he would be a good place to start. So I set my alarm to wake up, and called him at 7AM to let him know that I was now looking for work in Brisbane. At 10:00AM I got a call back saying that I had a job that started at 2:30PM for $20/hr if I wanted it. It wasn’t really what I was looking for but it was a job. I felt that that was too good to be true having a job just fall into my lap like that. Definitely a good break for Shawn. The hours are 2:30 to 10:30 and the location is a 5 min walk from the Yeerongpilly train station which is about 20minutes down the line from my closest train station (Brunswick St.). The job is working in a warehouse for scaffolding. Trucks come in with scaffolding from buildings that have been built and we take it off the truck, count it and put it away. Then we count out the pieces that we just put away and make up another order to go out to a building that needs to be built on an empty truck. It isn’t the kind of job that gives you a deep level of satisfaction but I can work one day and pay for my entire week at the hostel. With the hours too it will allow me time to look for a more machining oriented job. Instead of doing that right away though I figure I’ll just take a break and relax for a bit. I have a job, a place to stay a way to meet new friends I don’t really see the need to push my luck at the moment. I’ll just settle, get on my feet, and then go looking. Since I have started working at the scaffolding place I have bought a bike which has turned my 35minute walk to the train station from the hostel to a 7minute ride to the train station. For the bike nerds who read this I bought a Scott Sportster P2 which is a either flat bar road bike with full Shimano Deore and LX or a mountain bike with 700c wheels. I love it and it is definitely helping me get around the city. Biking on the left hand side of the road is definitely strange though. I have it down pretty well though now. I only have trouble when doing lesser used maneuvers like coming off a sidewalk and onto the road or pulling out of a laneway I still want to start out on the right hand side of the road. An oncoming vehicle usually reminds me pretty quickly what side to be on. I am working with some cool people. There are a bunch of Australians with a few of us foreigners thrown in. The job is pretty easy on the brain but fairly demanding on the body. As long as you can count to high numbers and lift metal tubing you will have no trouble working in a scaffolding warehouse. So that is how most of my days are filled. In the mornings before work I will get up, eat breakfast and then maybe get a chore done before getting ready for work. And by chore I mean pick up some groceries or look for bike stores. It really isn’t a very difficult life but I am pretty busy. Internet at the hostel is pretty sketchy. They have a built in computer where you can pay $1 and get 16-25mins on it which includes internet so you never know when it is going to boot you off. The other option is that you can leach internet from some unknown source if you sit on one seat on a couch in one room. No other seat works and the signal is very weak. If someone moves the couch to watch movies it may take a couple of days to find the sweet spot again. But hey, at least it doesn’t eat through all your $1 coins that I need to do my laundry. Everything at the hostel takes $1 coins. It takes $6 to wash and dry cloths in the pathetically weak washer and drier and both only accept $1 coins. Do you have any idea how long it takes to collect $6 in $1 coins? About the same amount of time as it takes me to dirty all of my clothes luckily enough. The library where I am at right now is closing and the librarians look really mean so I am going to have to end here and I won’t be able to upload any pictures this time but I will hopefully have another post soon so keep patient. I am having a good time but still miss you all very much. Merry Christmas to you all as you enjoy your white, snowy Christmas. I am very jealous – although not too jealous as I will be on the beach on the Gold Coast.

Moving to Brisbane

2007-12-10T18:53:00.000-08:00

Wow I really haven’t updated my blog in a long time; and a lot has happened. I have moved from the gold coast to Brisbane. And from a hostel in Brisbane to a house. The lack of updates has come mainly from a lack of internet access and partly from me running like a mad man and not taking the time to upload a blog. So I’ll jump into my time travel machine and jump back in time to my move and catch everybody up. Here we go... So, Kevin and Estelle Ellis (Brendon’s parents who own the house I was staying in) came home from their vacation and it was going to be pretty cramped in the house with all of us staying there. This was a good opportunity to give me a kick to move on to my original plan. The gold coast is like a drug to me it seems. I am addicted to it. I found a hostel in Brisbane that looked nice and it said that it would be quiet which would be good if I found work. The buses stop just outside the Ellis’ house so it was easy to get to the train station and the train runs straight to Brisbane getting there was easy. The hard part was packing everything back into my bags! My plan was to get off the train and call a cab to the hostel. That really didn’t really work out, ah well. I have since learned that the taxis in Brisbane are very under numbered so when I called it was busy forever so I figured I would walk. This was another one of those decisions that we call wrong. Walking for 45mins with 2 large suitcases is hard work. Especially in Brisbane which is very hilly. Between the train station and the hostel are 3 major up hills and down hills. When I finally made it to “The Homestead” there was only one bed available. When I checked on the internet one site said that there were all sorts of rooms available for long lengths of time. I was lucky that they had the one bed in a 4 person room and then the night after I could change into a 6 person room which is cheaper. Lesson learned – book ahead because you never know. I also found out much later that the hostel staff would have come to pick me up for free. But that is all part of the adventure. Whenever something I do doesn’t work out as planned, for me, it just adds to the adventure. My trip won’t be memorable if everything always ran like clockwork. I booked into the hostel for one week. It is cheaper to book a week at a time then go day by day – makes sense. The first night I was big loner and just watched tv and went to bed. The following day was mainly spent doing groceries and getting my self set up in my new room (because I had to change by 10AM which is check out time even though I wasn’t checking out… that was weird). That night I made friends with a sheet metal worker from New Zealand and we had a few drinks with some Germans who were drinking wine out of a box and playing drinking games complete with a board and playing pieces that they moved around. They were much more into this than I am. But it was fun to watch and they all went off to the bars and I went to bed. Sunday I made my way back down to the Gold Coast and hung out on the beach again and stopped in to see Mellen and Brendon who fed me and let me check my emails. I think I will leave my update there and talk about my first week in Brisbane and job searching in my next update. Hopefully we will get internet in our house soon and I can update more regularly. Here is a picture of crossing the river coming into Brisbane on the train and a shot of my bed in the 6 person dorm that I was staying at in the hostel. I miss you all and I will try much harder to update this more regularly in the future.
Cheers,

Melbourne Cup

2007-11-07T21:13:00.000-08:00

Tuesday was the Melbourne Cup aka the race that stops the nation. It is true. A lot of businesses don't even open on that day, most businesses are only open in the morning and in the very least every shop closes for 5mins in the afternoon for the race. For those that don't know the Melbourne Cup is a huge horse race. It is really a lot more than that but really that is what it is centered around. It is pretty strange really. There are somewhere around 10 or 11 races during the day but only one race for the Melbourne Cup. We were going to go watch the race in a pub but it turned out that Mellen and Brendon were doing other things. I watched the unimportant races leading up to the big race on tv and then ran down to pub to watch THE race. I ordered a pot of Tooheys because you have to. A pot is smaller than a pint. Think of the glasses you get at the bars that really rip you off when you pay for a pint and they give you the smallest possible pint shape glass that they could find. Except they are cheap here. I think my pot was $2.20. It’s a pretty good size for drinking too. I am told that they don’t really get pints here very much either a pot or go all the way to a pitcher. That sounds fair enough to me. So I had my beer and I spent the 15mins leading up to the race watching everyone laughing and drinking and madly placing bets. I really didn't understand how the betting worked, or really which horses had a shot, and I figured today wasn't the day to learn. Lucky too, because I would have picked Purple Moon, who came second. You don't get any money for second. "If you're not first you're last"
Horse racing has to be one of the most un-american sports I have ever seen. There was no count down or staging time. Once all the horses were in their gates they go. In the pub everyone was talking and drinking and it wasn't until some really loud (probably really drunk) guy yelled that they were racing that everyone fell silent. Pretty weird when you are used to an opening kickoff or face-off to start a game. The race itself is 3600m and it looked like a lap and a half or maybe 2 laps of the track. For the first lap everyone was super quiet but for the last half a lap the noise grew little by little until everybody was screaming. It was really cool and really exciting. The race itself was really exciting too. It looked like Purple Moon was going to take it from 4th spot coming out of the final corner but another horse named Efficiency mad a wild dash for the line from way back in the pack. Coming around the last corner he was probably in 15th-20th place. Was it ever exciting seeing him catch and pass Purple Moon in the last 50m. And that was the race. 2mins of excitement and then nothing. I stuck around to see if there was going to be anything else happening, and nope that was it. Again, very un-american. Some guy on a horse and an antenna sticking out of his riding helmet rode beside the jockey and interviewed him on his way back to the stable but then they were getting ready for another race. So I walked back home. By the time I left, ran to the bar, watched the race and walked home only half an hour had passed. Seems weird to shut down a whole country at 3:00 in the afternoon for a 2 minute race. I really enjoyed experiencing it though.
Watching it on TV was very cool also. It is kind of like Grammy night on the red carpet, but all afternoon. All the big celebrities are dressed in the huge designers and get interviewed all day by network people. The fashion is super cool too. All the women wear big hats with fascinators on the hat or on their hair if they aren't wearing a hat. A fascinator is made up of big flowers and feathers and ribbon. I really am not explaining it very well but it is really cool. Everyone is wearing their very best and drinking champagne all day. It’s like a big swanky party with a horse race thrown it. Very cool. Next year I will have to get all dressed up and watch it somewhere a little swankier (I am told my Microsoft office spell check that swankier is a word).
Cheers,

I'm back!

2007-11-06T06:10:00.000-08:00

Hey there,
I haven’t posted in a while because internet here has been kind of weird. Apparently unlimited bandwidth in Australia is actually limited. Kind of opposite to the definition. I guess with three new people in the house it but a bit of a strain on the server. Since Brendon needs the internet for his work I have been trying to stay off it. I had a pretty good couple of days at the beach. Saturday was really warm and sunny pretty much all day. Therefore I spent a lot of time there. I bought some SPF 30 sunscreen some new sandals that didn't rub in the same place as my current blisters and a beach towel to get my day going. I figured if someone was going to spend an extended period of time in Australia these wouldn't be wasted purchases. At the beach I finished reading the Rick Mercer Report book. It was a pretty fun easy read. Pretty much a compilation of some of his better rants from his tv show. Sunday was cloudy, windy and cold. I went to the beach anyways. I brought a book and read and watched and listened to the ocean. Even though there was no sun it was still a pretty good day. I had another book to read that I had started on the plane so I am working my way through the books that I brought. So that was more or less my weekend. On Monday I made my trip into Brisbane for an interview at an employment agency. The guy that I talked to was very knowledgeable. I think he was the first one to actually understand what I wanted to do and what I could do. He said at one point that as long as I could do everything that my resume said I could I should have no problem. Which, thankfully, I can. I don't understand lying on a resume. You are just setting yourself up to look like a fool later. And be unemployed again. But I digress. There were lots of forms to fill out and a lot of different numbers that I have as well as need to get. Apparently if I work in Australia without a Tax File Number I get taxed 46%. Luckily I applied for a TFN a while ago, but they do take a while to process. So I'll have to send that in along with the bank branch number of where I opened my account. I really don't know what the time line is going to be for this company finding me work but I hope it is a short one. Not that my life is bad right now, but I think it is time to get back to work. I was looking back and I haven’t had a job in 5 weeks! So that has been a nice little vacation, I guess. I have to say I am starting to get a little restless. I am doing well still money wise surprisingly but just about anyone after not working for 5 weeks I think would look at their accounts and wish for more. Speaking of money I made a bit of a mistake when opening up my new account. I have opened a new account with the National Australian Bank so that will make things easier. When I opened it though, I deposited most of my Australian cash that I brought with me here in the account. They don't give you your debit card when you open the account, they mail it to you afterward and then the pin number the next day. So now I have run out of cash and I am still waiting for my card in the mail... So everything is now going on my Visa card. Luckily just about everywhere accepts visa. Oh well, we live and we learn. As an added bonus it has curbed my spending so I don't have to worry about finding a job as quickly, and you know what that means - more time on the beach! Funny how everything ends up pointing to the beach. I will leave you with a picture of me feeding one of the brave birds that come to the veranda looking for food and me riding my bike around the Surfer's Paradise Indy track that is still set up even though the Indy ran the weekend before I arrived. I am sure it will get taken down in good time.
I miss you guys,

More job hunting and still no beach

2007-11-02T02:46:00.000-07:00

Today's job search went a little bit better than yesterday. I woke up early and headed out in the morning to job hunt up north. I dropped off some resumes but to be honest other than one shop they were all pretty dingy and small. The one shop was a very classy establishment but already had 3 apprentices so the manager figured they would have their hands full training them without getting me set up too. Plus they had a type of software and machine I had never worked on before so to be fair I would probably would have required a bit of training too. I still have a few places to go to that are a bit more inland here on the Gold Coast. I got a call today from an employment agency who was interested. They are stationed up in Brisbane so I am going up for a meeting on Monday. I was talking to the guy and he told me to try the Gold Coast but the majority of the good shops are up in Brisbane. So I may have to settle for the city that separates the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. I figure that wouldn't be too bad. So I hope the interview goes well. I think I'll do a little research and bring some resumes to drop off at some of the better shops maybe. What really disappointed me today is that I blasted home after dropping off the last resume so I could spend the afternoon on the beach. By the time I got in, changed into my board shorts, had a drink and headed out it clouded over and got cold and windy. I decided I would head to the beach anyways and see if it would just blow over. I lasted around 5 minutes before I got so cold I had to come back. Fun. Just after I got in it started to storm again. So, being Saturday, I will spend a lot of time on the beach and maybe even go swimming a bit. Or even see if I can get Mellen or Brendon to show me how to catch a wave on the boogie board. I was thinking of heading up to Noosa to watch a huge bike race but apparently Noosa is quite a bit further away than I thought it was and I wouldn't have time in the morning to make the trip in time for the start of the race. So there probably won't be a post tomorrow as I will be at the beach and then applying aloe and vitamin e all night. Miss you all,

Getting settled

2007-11-01T03:55:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a great Halloween. I didn't. It's not that I didn't have a good time; I just didn't have a Halloween. The Halloween thing seems to have not made it over to Australia. I hear in some of the more family oriented suburbs in bigger towns. I got to see the costumes that Steph sewed for her and a friend and they looked great. Apparently she has now taken over my desk area and set up a sewing station on her old desk. That sounds like a pretty ideal set up to me. So I still haven’t been to the beach which is really starting to bother me. But, I suppose it is a good sign because I am getting a lot done to get settled here. Mellen took me cell phone shopping so that when I drop off resumes the employers actually have a way to get back to me. In Australia it seems that the prepaid option is much cheaper in the long and short term than getting into a contract. That works well for me. So we walked around and browsed all over the place. I finally decided that there were hardly and differences between any of the carriers and just picked a Nokia that I liked and it was the cheapest phone that Virgin carried and went with Virgin. So I hope I picked right. I get free voicemail with it apparently so that’s an added bonus. Oh ya, cell phone numbers in Australia have 9 digits. Land lines have 6. And depending on where you are calling from you have to put different numbers in front of them. I still need to ask how to call anywhere. I feel like that is going to take some time. The next three days were spent drafting an Australia specific cover letter and looking over different classified in the paper and online. There are quite a few employment agencies on the gold coast so I figured the best and easiest way to start was to have them look for a job for me. Over here the employer pays the agency when we get connected so I figured it doesn't cost anything so I may as well. When I got back from that, I Researched all the CNC machine shops on the gold coast on yellow pages.com. The next day I spent the day going to get an atlas of the gold coast, making a word document of all the shops and addresses and plotting their location in the atlas. All these things maybe don't seem like they would take a full day. But when you are sitting on the veranda looking out at that view its really hard not to get distracted. So I had quite a few shops up north to apply at and a few closer down south to try out too. When I woke up this morning I figured it would be a good use of time to head over and open a bank account in the morning and head down south and drop off resumes afterwards. So that is what I did. No problems at the bank, I will receive my eftpas (interac) card in the mail here soon and am all set up with telephone and internet banking. Unfortunately I wasn't as successful with my resumes. I went to about 7 different shops down in Burleigh but only dropped off 4 resumes. Two of the shops didn't have any CNC machines when I peeked in so I just took off. One shop looked really promising. It had lots of new really nice machines but the guy ran his own shop by himself and wasn’t going to hire anyone else. So that was a little disappointing because I would have really liked to work there. I got to chatting with him and he gave me the name of some places to try up north. Luckily they were already on my list. So, I'll try up there tomorrow. Then maybe I will have some time to go lye down on the beach while I wait to hear back from someone. I will keep you posted as to how it goes. Goodnight!

Queensland, the sunshine state - kinda

2007-10-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

What’s up everybody?
This post is going to be a short one. Although I have been making you all jealous about the great weather here, I thought I would talk a bit more about it. We are currently in storm season. I was under the impression that it never rained in Australia. Apparently in never rains in some places in Australia. I don't recall which days but we have had a few days of poor weather. Well actually a few days WITH bad weather. The rain doesn't show up and sock in for the day (or days) here. Here, you watch a storm cloud come in, it storms like mad, and then the sun comes back out and you watch the storm cloud move away. And when it storms, it really storms. It will rain so hard that you can't see your hands in front of your face. It will only storm for 10-30mins but in that time the clouds will empty all the water they hold. Apparently it isn't uncommon to get 4-6inches in 10-15 mins. So the streets flood and then drain away and 20mins latter it is back to normal. You can tell when a storm is coming because the winds will whip up (I don't know how fast they get but a couple of times it was hard to stay balanced while it was gusting) and the temperature will drop about 10 degrees. They are pretty fun to watch because they are pretty intense and don't last too long. We even got hail on from one storm that hit us, went out to the ocean, moved down the coast and came in to hit us from the other direction. Very cool. Luckily I packed everything I own and if I ever need to go out in it I have a rain jacket.
Shawn

I enjoy long walks on the beach...

2007-10-30T03:45:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
So the gold coast is amazing as is the house that I am staying in. These are pictures of the view out the back verandah. I had a little trouble getting used to the time change. I was pretty close, just a little off. For example, I would wake up at 5:30 in the morning and be unable to keep my eyes open at 8:00PM. So I really got to enjoy my mornings! I am not really a morning person so this was ok with me. I would get up and dittle around or read or try to pass the time. I tried to hold out to 8 to eat my breakfast so to get into a rhythm. And go for snacks through out the day but eat meals when they are supposed to be eaten not when I'm hungry. After 3 days I was more or less on schedule which helped things out. Before I get going on this post I want to show you guys/gals an amazing commercial. It is on fairly often and I just feel it is one of the best I have ever seen. It is for an Australian beer (aren't beer commercials always the best) that I will be trying at some point for the sole reason that this commercial is so cool. You are going to need sound. Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORfkh0OojxY. This company seems to have a pretty good marketing department because this is the one that was on air before which is also pretty cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmPHvrtsYqk. I love the soundtrack on the first one too. Enough about commercials and back to the beach - I mean my journey. Well, to be fair they are pretty much the same thing at this point. The first morning I woke up I sat on the verandah and looked out at the water and chatted to some friends on msn. In the afternoon I walked around the mall, Pacific Fair some more and then went to the beach! It was amazing. The sand is bright white and the waves were huge. I decided that I would walk up towards Surfer's Paradise. I didn't make it all the way but I cut back towards the road and grabbed a sandwich at a little cafe and headed back to the beach for a walk home in the water. The next day I headed to the mall again after much of the same morning to get me a pair of board shorts. I got them from a sweet surf store that stated on the gold coast back in the 70's and these seem like their own brand. So after I got my boardies (Australian for board short which are surf shorts) I headed down to the beach and went for another walk this time down south towards Burleigh. When I got as far as I wanted to walk I went for a bit of a swim and realized I had no idea how to swim in big swells. I probably looked pretty funny to the locals getting knocked over with every wave. But I had an absolute blast! I have a boogie board at my disposal here so I will have to use that in a bit to learn how to ride the waves. The boogie boarders are looked down upon from the pure surfers. The boogie boards are called shark biscuits or eski (cooler) lids. Australians apparently have slang or abbreviations for everything. Lots to learn but you can usually figure it out. The next day Mellen, Bendon and I hopped on a bus to Surfer's paradise. Here you pay by the distance you are going on the busses unlike Ottawa. They showed me around the little country town that has been descended upon by millions of tourists and lots of pricey shops. It is very cool but very awkward looking. I really like Mermaid Waters/Broadbeach much better. Less expensive shops, cleaner, less tourists (because I am CLEARLY not a tourist also) and most importantly less people on the beach. After we were done looking around we walked back along the beach back to Mermaid Waters. Well this post has sort of bounced around a bit, so I hope it made some sense. I think I will leave it at that for now. By next post I should be more or less up to date to where I am right now. I am thinking about you all very much and wish you could be here to experience it with me.
Lots of love,

Up to the Gold Coast

2007-10-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

Alright. Domestic terminal. There are quite a few airlines that fly domestically in Australia. The only two that I had heard of before were Virgin and Qantas. Virgin was way cheaper than Qantas for a flight up to the Gold Coast so I flew Virgin. I bought my ticket no problem and checked in electronically but there was a huge line up to check the bags. Once I got through that line there was no line up for the security check, I guess because everyone was standing in line for the bags. I had way too much luggage for a domestic flight but the girl working the baggage desk cut me a deal of some sort. So that was a surprise expenditure. I was more than double but not quite triple what you are supposed to bring. Eesh. The waiting area was amazing for a domestic terminal. There were surf shops and massage parlors and clothing stores. I went to the food court to get a little tandouri chicken wrap because I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast coming into Sydney and it was now 11:00. Then I gave Mellen, Carolyn's older sister, a call to tell her I was in Sydney and what time I would be arriving in Coolangatta where the Gold Coast airport is. She was going to bus down and then we would take a Taxi back up the Mermaid Waters where I would be staying. I thought that was pretty generous but unnecessary and I would just take a taxi up myself and save her the transport. Carolyn's parents had shown me where the place was and had put a little x on a map for me so it really wasn’t hard to find. So I waited around in the Gate 34 lounge and waited for my plane to arrive. As with just about every other plane this trip it was late getting in too. The crew did a good job with a quick turnaround and the pilot put the hammer down and we only got in about 15mins late. The Coolangatta airport was awesome. The plain pulled up next to the terminal and we just walked across the tarmac to the back doors. It was hot. You stepped out of the plane and were hit by a blast of hot dry air - awesome. My bags were waiting for me on the conveyor belt no problem. I am very happy that neither of them got lost on my many plane changes. There ends my 23hrs of flying in 26hrs. I was very happy not to have to look for another plane to get on. I found a taxi no problem and the guy helped my put my bags in the trunk. I had to get them back out when we got to Mermaid Waters an he realized how heavy they both were! It was about a 40min drive from the airport and the cabbie was a great guy. I was the first person he had ever picked up from the airport who had never been to the Gold Coast before. So I think he had a good time telling me all about it. I found the place no problem and Mellen and Brendon were sitting out on the veranda over the waterways. They showed me where my room was and then told me I should go walk around Pacific Fair to get the blood back in my legs and feeling better after all the flying. Pacific Fair is the largest shopping mall in the southern hemisphere, so Bendon tells me. It is an open air mall with a shop walkway all around it. It is definitely what the Centrum walk was supposed to be like but this actually works. And the mall part is bigger than any of the malls in Ottawa. Pretty amazing. It is ultra convenient because there is everything that we would need there and its parking garage is kitty corner from the house. After that Brandon cooked me a delicious steak with mushroom topping dinner with homemade greek salad. At around 8:30 when I couldn't keep my eyes open any more I went to bed and woke up again at about 5:30. There will end me trip up to the Gold Coast. I am off to get a cell phone today so I can start applying for jobs.
Miss you all,

Leaving on a jet plane

2007-10-27T03:08:00.000-07:00

We last left off I was waiting for my flight at the Toronto airport. My American Airline's plane was a little late getting in to the terminal. It didn't bother me too much but some people that I was sitting with only had 1 1/2 hours to make their transfer in LA. I, on the other hand had 3 hrs so I was cool as a cucumber. The flight was 5hrs which meant that I was supposed to get into LA at around 9pm local time. Even though the flight was late leaving we somehow managed to make it back in the air and arrived just about on time. There wasn't any food served but I bought a little sandwich and a coke with $5US that I found in my room when I was packing. On the approach into LA we flew over the terrible fires in Malibu. They were huge. When I got in the terminal I had time to sit down, read my book a little, look around some shops and line up early to get my second boarding pass. My plane was a really sweet Qantas jet painted orange with aboriginal artwork all over it. I wasn't really looking forward to this 16hr flight but it turned out that it wasn't so bad after all. Each seat had a personal screen into the back of the seat in front of it. There were over 60 movies on demand to choose from and just as many tv shows as well as audio cds. Once we got up in the air I turned on Blades of Glory and shortly thereafter dinner was served. I had a delicious piece of chicken with wild rice and a pepper and corn salsa. It came with a really cool shredded carrot salad. The girl I was sitting beside didn’t want hers and gave it to me - very exciting. After dinner and the movie I started watching the new Die Hard movie. I didn't make it very far before I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. They had turned all the lights off so sleeping was pretty natural. I only woke up once though out the "night" and just popped a Gravol and went right back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning I watched an other movie and then breakfast was served. Breakfast was an omlette and sausage with a fruit cup. I had time after breakfast to watch The Flying Scotsman, a documentary on Graeme O'Bree who was a controversial but great cyclist. I had always wanted to see it so that was great. After that we were ready for the decent into Sydney. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the bridge or the opera house coming in. One, because I was on the wrong side of the plane and two, because Sydney was covered with clouds. We were late getting in and then had problems with the terminal meeting up with the plane. So that put us back about an hour. Getting off the plane there were nothing but line ups. Or, queues as they are referred to here. Line ups for customs, line ups for visas, line ups for baggage and line ups to leave the airport. My uncle Rober was supposed to meet up with me but I feel like he probably gave up and went back to work when I hadn't shown up 2 hours after I was supposed to get in. So then I decided not to spend any time in Sydney and head straight for the domestic terminal, which is about 3km away from the international terminal. I was thinking about walking but was happy with my decision when I grabbed a shuttle bus. They really are pretty much two separate airports. I think I will leave with that because I am tired and am heading up to bed. So goodnight and I miss you all so much.
Lots of love,

Packing up to go

2007-10-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I thought that I would set up a blog so that people could check where I'm at and what I'm doing down here in Australia. I will probably update pretty regularly now while I am getting set up and taper off a bit once I settle down. I have now been here on the Gold Coast for 2 1/2 days now but I'll try to catch up on my Journey so far. Maybe I'll even catch up to where I am now.
I spent most of the week of the 15th packing up my room and bags. My family is probably going to be moving out of the Kanata house and up to the Cottage while I am away. That added a little extra packing on my part and ultimately I left my room in a worse state than when I began. I did get quite a few boxes packed up though so that will help the fam a little bit in the spring I guess. I finished my packing my bags on Sunday night, which is pretty typical for me to finish up at the last minute. Surprisingly I did manage to sleep pretty well. This is due mainly to the awesome dinner that that my friend Chris organized for me. There was a ton of amazing food that everyone did a great job on, LOTS of wine, and a bunch of great friends to really make it a special night. After dinner we did go downtown for a little fun and to meet up with some others.
Ok, back to Monday morning. I woke up and had very little packing to do. Just some toiletries and other little things. Mom, Dad, Steph and I piled into the Buick and took off for the Toronto airport. We got to the airport early and had a nice time to sit around and relax before I left. Carolyn even came up from Hamilton to send me off. About and 1 1/2 before my flight I checked in and had to say goodbye. It was pretty tough but we didn't cause too big of a scene I don't think. Customs was a breeze and I had about an hour to wait around for our plane to show up. I think that is pretty good for now. Next time I'll give an update about the multiple flights that had me ending up on the Gold Coast. I thought I would rub that in again. Miss you all,