Well shit.
As you may recall, I spoke in my last post about an event-staffing job that I had been signed up for by my friends at the Work and Travel Company. They listed the job as lasting from the end of February till the middle of April. I got an apartment in preparation for the two months of work I was about to embark on, only to find out at my job induction that the total amount of work I would be doing was only about two weeks, not two months….
As I mentioned before, plans have changed.
At first, I wasn’t worried. “I can find a job,” I said to myself, “I am living next to a street full of restaurants and I have restaurant experience.” Then my roommates informed me that Lygon street (Melbourne’s Ave) is a dodgy neighborhood, and most businesses are run by Italians who are fans of The Godfather. “Alright, well then I’ll just peace out of Melbourne and go pick fruit.” My back up plan seemed so flawless, until I was directed to the obvious flaw: minimum rent in my apartment is two months, and if I left before then there was a strong chance I would lose my $500 deposit. So there I was, stuck in the city with virtually no job, unable to leave for fear of crippling my already bleak financial situation.
Picture yourselves in that situation. Imagine every plan you concoct being foiled, and feeling trapped.
I bet none of you would be as happy as I am right now.
This is why I am here. This is my first real test at standing on my own, and being a real adult, and I’m excited. Sure, having the event-staffing job work out the way it should have would’ve been nice, and I suppose I still would have been working to earn rent like any normal adult, but this new wrinkle makes my challenge that much greater, which makes the experience far more rewarding.
I won’t say that I haven’t had help. I consulted with my parents, and I received a not-altogether-insignificant loan to assure that I didn’t become homeless, but the money isn’t free. In fact, it puts more pressure on me to find a job, because I can’t stand being in debt to my parents, and if I’m ever going to pay them off I need to sort my self out as fast as possible.
In other news, I found a $50 bill in the street today. Clearly my luck is turning.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Day 33: There's Been a Change of Plans
When I first spoke to the representatives of the Work and Travel Company, the people organizing this grand endeavor of mine, their pitch was very much like what I head read in their literature back in the states. “Be flexible, your plans will change, be open to new things blah blah blah blah.” Being a willful and stubborn (read: stupid) person, I thought to myself before coming to Australia that once I had set myself on a path that it would just magically work out for me, and that I would have no need to change my plans.
False.
When I signed myself up for Surf Camp in an attempt to gather some stability, a ramshackle plan quickly fell into place behind it. I would return from Surf Camp, ready to buckle down and be a serious adult, and begin heading up the eastern coast of Australia, where the majority of their major cities are kept, looking for work. My first stop was Collaroy, a place that apparently spent all of their advertising dollars painting themselves as a workers’ paradise.
False.
When my first attempt at finding a permanent job yielded no results, I began to wonder if simply changing my location would make the tedious process of blitzing all the businesses in one area with resumes any more fruitful. So I changed my mind, changed my direction, and high-tailed it back down the eastern coast to Sydney, and then kept moving down on to Melbourne. Work and Travel Company had a job posting for a company in Melbourne that required several dozen event staff, and since many of the friends I made in my first week in Australia were already down in Melbourne waiting for the job to start, heading towards guaranteed work was a no brainer.
In a short 24 hours from my arrival, I managed to find a place that was renting out a bedroom thanks to the help of my friend Clarke Miller. My new apartment (it feels pretty cool to be able to say that) is in a north of downtown Melbourne, just of few blocks away from Melbourne University. The most direct route to the city involves traveling down Lygon St., where there are an abundance of cheap restaurants and stores etc. I realized this morning that I’m basically living next to Melbourne’s equivalent of The Ave, which is ironic but also very cool.
False.
When I signed myself up for Surf Camp in an attempt to gather some stability, a ramshackle plan quickly fell into place behind it. I would return from Surf Camp, ready to buckle down and be a serious adult, and begin heading up the eastern coast of Australia, where the majority of their major cities are kept, looking for work. My first stop was Collaroy, a place that apparently spent all of their advertising dollars painting themselves as a workers’ paradise.
False.
When my first attempt at finding a permanent job yielded no results, I began to wonder if simply changing my location would make the tedious process of blitzing all the businesses in one area with resumes any more fruitful. So I changed my mind, changed my direction, and high-tailed it back down the eastern coast to Sydney, and then kept moving down on to Melbourne. Work and Travel Company had a job posting for a company in Melbourne that required several dozen event staff, and since many of the friends I made in my first week in Australia were already down in Melbourne waiting for the job to start, heading towards guaranteed work was a no brainer.
In a short 24 hours from my arrival, I managed to find a place that was renting out a bedroom thanks to the help of my friend Clarke Miller. My new apartment (it feels pretty cool to be able to say that) is in a north of downtown Melbourne, just of few blocks away from Melbourne University. The most direct route to the city involves traveling down Lygon St., where there are an abundance of cheap restaurants and stores etc. I realized this morning that I’m basically living next to Melbourne’s equivalent of The Ave, which is ironic but also very cool.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Day 23: Let's Get Down to Business
Having spent the better part of the last three weeks in Sydney screwing around and being a tourist, I decided that it was time to exercise the “work” part of my “working holiday visa.” On Monday I left the city and moved to a suburb about an hour away called Collaroy, a very small town located on a beach favored by the locals. The hostel in the area advertised as being a great place to find work, ranging from full time jobs to cash-in-hand one day work, and considering the fact that I’ve blown through over 50% of my life savings already, I was ready for any job I could find.
My first two days in Collaroy were spent distributing resumes. In those two days, I visited two major malls, three separate towns, and inquired at close to 50 stores, and by the end of the day, I had only three good leads (good in that they had made vague comments about looking for new hires in the near future). I returned to my hostel after the second day, finally understanding the meaning of the word “recession,” to find a posting asking for one laborer for the next day. I immediately jumped on the phone, and spoke with Michael, a man with his own landscaping business. He was looking for someone to put in one full days work, and was offering $120 in cash. Despite a pick up time of 6:30 am, I was more than happy to accept.
When Michael first rolled up in his truck, I began having second thoughts. He was a fairly serious, quiet guy upon first appraisal, with a shaved head, several tattoos, and an ear piercing. The 45 minute car ride to the rural house he was landscaping for passed almost in silence as I wondered what I had gotten myself in to. Despite my fear of skinheads however, I was still willing to do gardening work for $15 an hour, and in retrospect, it was the right choice. Mike was quiet, but generally friendly, and didn’t seem too interested in Hitler or white power based on my brief conversations with him. I spent half of the day weeding a tediously large section of his client’s garden, and the other half un-potting and planting new plants.
The highlight of the day came in the middle of the mourning, as we were digging holes for the new plants. Mike, being the quiet man that he is, nearly neglected to tell me that he had accidentally dug into the burrow of a funnel web spider. As a self-admitted arachnophobe, being two feet from the worlds most lethal spider was slightly uncomfortable, especially when Mike decided to simply release the spider on the other side of the street instead of killing it.
At the end of the day, I returned to my hostel covered in dirt, smelling like manure, and feeling $120 richer. My introduction to working life in Australia had been about as unglamorous as it gets, but on the bright side, I had a new skill to add to my resume.
My first two days in Collaroy were spent distributing resumes. In those two days, I visited two major malls, three separate towns, and inquired at close to 50 stores, and by the end of the day, I had only three good leads (good in that they had made vague comments about looking for new hires in the near future). I returned to my hostel after the second day, finally understanding the meaning of the word “recession,” to find a posting asking for one laborer for the next day. I immediately jumped on the phone, and spoke with Michael, a man with his own landscaping business. He was looking for someone to put in one full days work, and was offering $120 in cash. Despite a pick up time of 6:30 am, I was more than happy to accept.
When Michael first rolled up in his truck, I began having second thoughts. He was a fairly serious, quiet guy upon first appraisal, with a shaved head, several tattoos, and an ear piercing. The 45 minute car ride to the rural house he was landscaping for passed almost in silence as I wondered what I had gotten myself in to. Despite my fear of skinheads however, I was still willing to do gardening work for $15 an hour, and in retrospect, it was the right choice. Mike was quiet, but generally friendly, and didn’t seem too interested in Hitler or white power based on my brief conversations with him. I spent half of the day weeding a tediously large section of his client’s garden, and the other half un-potting and planting new plants.
The highlight of the day came in the middle of the mourning, as we were digging holes for the new plants. Mike, being the quiet man that he is, nearly neglected to tell me that he had accidentally dug into the burrow of a funnel web spider. As a self-admitted arachnophobe, being two feet from the worlds most lethal spider was slightly uncomfortable, especially when Mike decided to simply release the spider on the other side of the street instead of killing it.
At the end of the day, I returned to my hostel covered in dirt, smelling like manure, and feeling $120 richer. My introduction to working life in Australia had been about as unglamorous as it gets, but on the bright side, I had a new skill to add to my resume.
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