It's Dark and I Now Sell Sunglasses

Those that read my infrequent facebook postings will be aware that I'm now gainfully employed.  At least I will be, until they figure out I don't know my arse from my elbow and kick me to the curb.  The job in question is processing telephone and internet orders for a sunglasses retailer.  Went for a drink with my new colleagues on Friday.  They seem canny, but fuck me they talk about sunglasses a lot. Compared to my old job, which entailed listening to some of the most horrifying tales of human crapitude I've ever heard and then trying to find some way to help them, this seems fairly pressure free, though the fact that the operating system I'm using is half in Italian hasn't helped ease me into the roll.  Nevertheless they seem fairly impressed with me - mainly because the lass who was doing the role before me was shite - and this hopefully means that I'm set till December.

This doesn't mean that the debauchery - or at least my mumbling, head sunk in shoulders, do you mind awfully if I stand here awkward version of debauchery - has stopped, only slowed down.  I thought I was coming out of my shell at one point, but was then kindly informed that I came across like I was pissed out my tree drunk and so I crept back into it before I disgraced myself further.  I was later told off for being too quiet so I don't fucking know anymore.  On Thursday I won free drinks at tranny bingo (it's like normal bingo, but with more trannies) which I believe is the first thing I've won since I got a book token for a comic I drew when I was thirteen.

Bob continues in much the same vein as ever.  At the moment he has developed the habit of schmoozing a girl over the course of a evening, gradually working his way into her affections, only to find out at the end of the finish that she has a boyfriend that she's got absolutely no intention of cheating on. Somehow he seems to taken on the role of the hostel's entertainments officer on a purely voluntary basis, which he's fine with as mouthy drunkeness is kinda his gig.  He's less pleased about the new IT job, which starts Monday, but not so displeased that he's not going to take it. Now that we both have jobs, and the lovely, if oddly sized, money that goes with it a trip to the blue mountains is on the cards at some point in the future. Oh, and if you're ever in Sydney and fancy trying the monorail, don't bother; it's shit.

Love and fishes

Dave

A Brief, Parochial Rant About Australian Coinage

I don't make many claims for the UK. It's cold, it's wet and the national culture seems to be devolving so that it now revolves around a particularly grim brand of alcopop scented joyless hedonism.  One thing we do well, however, is making money.  To clarify, I'm not talking about the aquisition of money, which increasingly seems to be the sole preserve of a particular breed of chinless moral degenerates, but the creation of physical tokens of nominal amounts.

Australian money, by contrast, is retarded.  The notes aren't too bad.  They're made of plastic which means that they're essentially indestructible.   Unfortunately it also means that they're incredibly slippy, which isn't necessarily a quality you want in your notes.

The coins, however, are a massive pain in the arse.  For some reason they have not only opted to make the highest denomination, the $2, about the size of a tiddlywink, but also make it almost exactly the same size of the 5 cent piece, making it impossible to tell whether your pocket full of change is enough to buy a meal or half a peanut.  At the other end of the scale, the 20 and 50 cent pieces are both the size of a baby's head and could probably kill a man if thrown hard enough.  The end result is that at the end of any night out you have pockets so loaded with shrapnel that your trousers are in constant danger of falling down.

May soon be glad of any shrapnel I have though.  Still don't have a job.  Went for an interview for a waiter's position the other day.  This basically consisted of them throwing an apron at me and telling me to do the job.  As the place was absolutely heaving and I've never done the job before I basically stood there like a stunned rabbit, trying not to let my bottom lip wobble.  I don't think they'll be calling me back.

Bob, as predicted, is now gainfully employed.  In fact, he has been offered two jobs, one starting shortly after the other finishes.  Rather sweetly he made a point of asking if I was okay as I've been killing myself with worry over the work issue and he hasn't.  Having known him most my life and not being a sour faced bastard who begrudges others their success I assured him this was unnecessary.

In other news, went to the aquarium.  Unlike the zoo, they did have penguins.  Tiny, little fairy penguins.  They were awesome and I wanted to take one home, but the man wouldn't let me.

Love and Fishes

David

Bibbity Bobbity Boop

The shit call centre job in Sydney has not, at this point in time, materialised.  This is not for lack of trying.  I have a slightly rumpled suit, an easy smile and an air of slightly desperate willingness.  Bob was initially pinning his hopes on finding work within the hostel, which wouldn't have paid anything, but would have given him his accommodation free.  Unfortunately he lost out to a French lass name Laury and so is now sending out CV's to respective employees.  He is doing this somewhat begrudgingly, but, given that his skill set is infinitely more marketable than mine (which amounts to being able to draw a really good cartoon of a confused looking child holding a banana) he should be sorted as soon as he can be arsed to commit to it with any sort of energy.  Still, I've  had a couple of interviews so far and the situation is still far from desperate.

In the interim I've continued with the general tourist thing: going to climb the bridge, noticing its $140 cheaper to climb the pylon and doing that instead.  Midweek we met up with Erin again, who was showing Tony and Sarah from Canada around Sydney before they returned home.  We caught the ferry to Taronga Zoo which gave me the opportunity to take the requisite photos of lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!).  The penguins were hiding, which saddened me, but I saw a platypus, which pleased me and learnt their offspring are called puggles, which delighted me.  I have yet to locate a photo of a kangaroo with it's knob out for Michelle.  I shall have to make her one myself.


The rest of the week has been spent pickling my liver on goon.  Goon, for those unfamiliar with the term, is cheap Australian plonk.  It comes in a large box, costs about $10 and will make you blind if you drink enough of it.  It does, however, serve the primary purpose of all alcohol, which is to be a social lubricant.  True, drunk Dave is only slightly more outgoing than sober Dave, but, man, does he like to dance (though that didn't help him even slightly with the lass he spent two nights trying and failing to cop off with).

The week culminated in a fancy dress party that I had been trying not to think about.  This was in order to wave goodbye to Chris, the hostel's entertainment officer, who is a good lad and camper than Butlins.  It was, in fact, a laugh.  The theme was Disney and the costume choice was Merlin.  This proved to be one of those choices that sounds simple (bed sheet, pointy hat, fake beard, sorted), but actually proved a complete arse.  After fumbling around with needle and thread for the best part of an hour Aurora, one of the girls in the hostel, took pity on me and helped me knock together a half decent robe.  Thanks to her I didn't spend the night bopping around with my boxer shorts on display.  For this I am eternally in her debt.

Next week promises more of the same,  or maybe less of the same or maybe something completely different.  We shall see.

Love and fishes

Dave Denton

Drunken ramblings

It's hard being social sometimes.  Temperamentally I sit somewhere between the guy who sits on street corners and  mumbles to himself about pigeons and that one room mate you had who nobody ever sees and everyone suspects crap's in boxes rather than risk meeting someone en-route to the loo.  These tendencies have been magnified slightly by a case of jet lag  that will just not fucking shift.  I seriously believe that I now have a little bit of insight into the life of a narcoleptic.  I will be quietly getting on with something when a wave of blackness will well up behind my eyeballs and inform me that, yes, it may be sunny outside and, yes, my watch does say 3pm, but it is in fact 4 in the morning  and I should have been in bed hours ago.  Luckily people here are kind and respond to my snooze attacks  by quietly propping me in a corner, a thin trickle of drool leaking out of my mouth.

My fellow hostellers either haven't noticed that I am reticent bordering on the socio-phobic, don't care or are too polite to mention it.  As a result my first week in the fine city  of Sydney has been spent visiting numerous nightspots, dancing like no one is looking and eating out - in other words being sociable.  I think I've coped reasonably well, although at times I've felt as out of depth and place as a paraplegic in an arse kicking contest.   For the most part we've been going out down King's Cross, which is a neon mess of boozers, strip joints, massage parlours, night clubs, kebab shops and tourist tat shops.  Despite a preponderance of what Bob refers to as "pigeon kickers" and the two or three large, bald who hang around outside each girlie joint, pulling off the not inconsiderable trick of simultaneously hailing you like you're their best mate and glowering at you like they can't wait to push your teeth through the  back of your skull, the area's actually quite nice, with far less of the latent threat of violence that I've felt in other cities.  On a couple of occasions we've left KX (as T-shirt vendors insist on calling it) behind and travelled further into the  city itself.  I have now experienced my first foam party, which left me feeling like I'd been doing the washing up with my face.  Bob suffered some sort of allergic reaction to the foam or, as he insisted on calling it, "chemical burns", that left his face looking like he'd been bobbing in tomato puree.  It's since gone down, but he has so far refused to let any photos be taken of him, which may prove to be problematic as Australian CV's may or may not (we've received conflicting advice) require a phot to be included.  On another occasion we went to an indie night in a city centre pub, which was pretty much like every other shit indie night throughout the world, with the notable addition of seemingly limitless free sangria.  This proved to be my undoing somewhat and there are apparently photo's circulating of me over-enthusiastically getting off with with a girl I had met earlier in the night.  I haven't seen them.  I do not want  to see them.  Bob has been in his element, sharing none of my curmudgeonliness, and has already proved his worth by blocking various torrent sites, which has endeared him to the hostel staff, but probably not to the creepy guy in the dorm next door who was apparently downloading porn.  Nevertheless he's been complaining that he's not yet regained his  Canadian era confidence and swagger.  Personally I think it's a matter of time and he needs to put things in perspective, we shall see.  

Outside the hostel I've been exploring down town Sydney on foot.  The opera house and harbour bridge are, of course, instantly recognisable, though I was slightly taken aback by the scale of both, especiallyy the bridge, which is indeed stamped with the name of the great okayish town of Middlesbrough.  I'm also quite taken with the botanic gardens, which you have to pass through to get to central Sydney.  There was a bit of a kerfuffle midweek when it emerge that my phone had slipped out my pocket during one of my perambulations.  Luckily it was picked up by a lovely Thai lady, who, instead of keeping it or selling it for jelly babies and fizzy drinks as someone in England might do, instead waited while me and Bob came to retrieve it.  My immense gratitude was tempered by a slight sense of shame at being such an immense wally, this was compounded by the revelation that the lady wasn't a little old wifey as I'd pictured, but a rather attractive twenty something.  On Wednesday we met up with Bob's Australian friend, Erin, and her mate Lilly, both of whom were lovely.  There is talk of seeing her again, plus random Canadians, later this week.  In the interim, this week should mainly be about job hunting.  With any luck by the end of the week I'll have swapped my shit call centre job in England for a shit call centre job in Australia.  I shall let you know how I get on

Love and Fishes

Dave