This weekend in pictures
Here you go, don't have time to write anything, but check out this album.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=18323&l=a58ac&id=725420333
Monday | October 22, 2007
Thursday | October 18, 2007
Another day off
Have another day off. So far I haven’t been able to do anything constructive. Well, I did something as unusual for me as to do a picnic basket ( a green enviro bag from the supermarket Coles) with a baguette, watermelon, soy chocolate drink and a mudcake (sort of a ordinary chocolate cake which seems hugely popular here) that I didn’t touch. The plan is now to get really hungry so I can enjoy the 10 dollar pizza buffet at Fringe Bar later tonight, and hopefully there’ll be a party in the suburbs tonight with where some Swedish friends live. But till then, hmm, might as well hit streets and hand back last nights’ movie, Zodiac, a three out of five.
Wednesday | October 17, 2007
Day off
Today I'm having a day off. I’ve worked for 9 days in a row and had the misfortune of catching a cold (yeah, they do even exists down here) so I thought it was time to just take it easy. Which means mainly hanging around in my bed watching movies (feeling ill is not that much different from here to Sweden either). Anyway, god news is that I’ve organized a party for the backpackers at my work. It was something that me and my buddies Elise and Maria and joked about and, well, actually thinking it was a pretty good idea I settled for realizing it. That hard thing is to hand out the invitations as we hoped to make more of backpackers-thing but there are a lot of other people working there too. There’s especially one guy we don’t want to get there – Mussolini. That’s what we call one of the supervisors, like a minor boss. He might be in his thirties and hits on every single chick he stands close to. He never cares to learn to boys’ names, but knows what every girl is called, and asks where they’re from and stuff like that. Yesterday he asked Elise what she was doing this weekend (he has been girl out too) and when she said she might be going out with me and Maria) he was like: Oh, can I come?!. No, we don’t wanna hang out with our sexist boss on the weekends thanks. I’m gonna get back to Bottle Rocket now.
Friday | October 12, 2007
Full Throttle at Technicolor
Sorry guys for that there's been no post for a while. There's a rush at my work so there's been work every day and last night I worked overtime which meant that I got there at 3pm and got away at 3 am, usually I'm off at 11pm. 12 hours of work and then we couldn't get a ride home, which meant an hour’s walk back. It's a bit exhausting working all the time; especially when your day get's kind of torn when start at 3. But if I now have work this weekend i won't feel bad taking a couple of day off on Thursday and Friday next week. Anyway, I got to finish my breakfast/lunch and then get to work again. But the cash my friends, the cash!
Monday | October 08, 2007
A sort of treat for you
I figured that you after reading the tiring last post (I'll try to short my posts maybe) might want to see something else than text. So I'll post a link to some albums with pictures from Australia.
Also, if you at any have questions, comments or just like to say Hi, post comment. Piece of cake.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=16986&l=ac652&id=725420333
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=16070&l=0cbce&id=725420333
A deeply concerning meeting with the Scientolgists
Hi ya! As I was working late Saturday it didn't happen that much really, well, I was out a bit after that, meeting a couple of Swedes I come to known here but just hanging on that main places I've gone to before. Sunday however, I was off work. With too many people in the apartment and quite good weather I took a retreat to Hyde Park where I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was a worthy end to the series.
Then I decided to go look for a Market I've read about. But on my way I was stopped by a man "just wanting ask me a couple of questions". I like being asked questions on the street and agreed to do it. The questions were like "What do you want to be in life?" and "What's most important in your life?” I tried to answer them quite truthfully wondering a bit was this was all about? Okay, so when I was done he wondered I wanted to take a more ingoing test for free just a street away. Well, ok, he seemed to be a nice guy and should be a bit impulsive when travelling and then it came "I'm working for the Scientologists". If you don't know what the Scientologists are, they're like a church which claims to be helping people to self development, through expensive courses that is. They also say that the earth was created by an alien race if I'm not mistaken. In other words, rubbish. Quite a lot of famous people are in to it - Tom Cruise and John Travolta among others. Sorry bastards. So you might wonder why I continued to follow. You must see that getting a look into what these mad men are in to for free is quite interesting.
Anyway, knowing that I was not going to buy another word he told me I followed him into their office, which was really fancy. Lying not to have time to a 20 minute test I agreed to do a two minute "stress test". To do this I was to hold in two metallic cones that were fixed to some kind of measure device. A quite young fellow asked me questions and a meter on the device would register how much stress that subject caused me. Seemed that everything stressed me from my family to my education, to my relationships, to my health well you get it. Actually I didn't really feel stressed at all, more than the stress caused by getting my words right in English. But he was all "Oooohhh" and "Ahhhhh" about the meter. In the end he recommended a 249 dollar course in communication. I left the office with more knowledge a about the manipulative ways of the Scientologists and a hope that the other people that where picked up from the street weren't to buy this shit.
By the way, I never did find the market I was to look for. After a two hour quest I gave up, realizing I've been looking in the wrong place all the time.
Saturday | October 06, 2007
Friday night
Right, so maybe you guessed that I'd be out at some club in the crowded streets in Sydney on a Friday night. I'm not. My work stops me from it. I work at a place called Technicolor, basically what I do is to put DVD’s on pegs and put them on to a band into a machine. When I’m not doing that I put trays onto a similar band into the same machine. It's dull work I tell you, but it has grown on me (I've been there for six weeks maybe). You got your friends there, my regular buddies are a Swede called Maria and a Norwegian called Elise, but you also get a chance to meet new people as there is a constant flow of backpackers working on and off.
Technicolor is full of original characters and I'll soon update you guys with a top 3 list of my favorites
Wednesday | October 03, 2007
Tight spot coming up?
To get you to understand this post at all I might want to give you some background on how I live. As said in the last post I live in a flat together with 8 other people. It's quite common to live that many in small flats here in Sydney, as a lot (and I mean a lot) of Asians come here to study and to get somewhere to stay they hook up about 7-11 people in an apartment made for four.
Anyway, when I got back from work yesterday night (we use to entry phone to get in as we only got two keys), the security guard asked me to which apartment I was going. "1109" I answered. "Lot of people living there?", and this was not really in a friendly chit-chatty tone, but more an accusing I-want-the-facts-now-boy! kind of tone. He didn't really let me answer that one before he continued with the questions "You backpacking?" and "Who owns the apartment?". As I don't really know who owns the apartment I could just answer the first question and then walked away.
What I got from this conversation, or how I should put it, was that there might be an inspection coming up and if it will we might be in deep shit. The deep-shit bit I got from the Indonesian who is the "manager" of our apartment who told us that if there's an inspection and they discover that were over four people living here we get thrown out. It wouldn't be the end of the world though, it isn’t that hard to find a new place to live here.
So I dunno, we'll just see what happens I guess. I'll keep you informed!
Monday | October 01, 2007
I'm Jon and I'm in Australia
Alright, Hi there! I’m Jon and, as you might have guessed, I’m in Australia. Don’t know really how I should start this… Might just do it with the question: how did I end up here? Well, to start with I didn’t really have anything to do - working part-time, not wanting to get into the university just yet. Inspired by friends making travels to Thailand and Australia I decided to give it a shot, and in the end Australia seemed a good choice. I mean, it seemed simple enough to get a job, even though I might be picking bananas eight hours a day, and they speak English (which makes everything a bit easier, I can tell you that after traveling three weeks in southern Europe).
All the tickets and visa business was arranged through and organization specializing in this kind of travel so that went smooth and fast. Anyway, on the 21st of August I started my journey by going with flight London, from there another flight to Hongkong. You think that 10 hours on a plane would be a horrible experience - it wasn’t. I sat there getting food and snacks constantly, having the time of my life watching movies on my own private little tv-screen. I don’t know why I make such a fuzz about this cause that basically what you do when you’re home sick in Sweden, but anyway.
Okay, seeing this get’s a bit more detailed than it should be I fast forward a bit. The first weeks in Australia were busy ones. You had to get a place to live, get a job, get new friends and in between that think about that you actually are in another country and will stay there for another 8-9 months.
All of these things have worked out pretty good though I must say. I got a flat where I live together with 8 other people, I work at a warehouse and have bunch of friends of different nationalities. I guess I’ll go in to these things more another time. Right now I need to relax after a day at the beach (you actually feel tired after being at the beach down here strange enough) and then I’ll probably head down to Scubar (which is bar) where two of my flatmates work. Mondays are usually quite busy and fun there. Take care!
