Stack 'Em High Sell 'Em Cheap

It's raining in Sydney and I've been full of cold longer than I care to remember. 

I've managed to stick at the new job for two weeks now.  Although everyone I'm working with is canny enough I can't say that I'm that impressed with the company.  My job is essentially damage limitation.  What the company does is source goods from overseas and sells them in Australia at a discount.  All well and good.  What they don't tell customers until after they've paid is that there is a 2-10 week delivery period.  What they don't tell them ever is that 2-10 weeks means 10 weeks - which, because things go wrong, often stretches to 12-16 weeks.  If you think that waiting a huge chunk of a year to receive a product that you paid for today, only to then find it's a cheap Chinese knock off that often doesn't work, is all kinds of bullshit then, congratulations, you're pretty much in agreement with everyone I've dealt with.  Add in the fact that I've not really had any training and don't have access to a lot of the information that I need to do the job and I'm exhausted.  It also transpires that one of my colleagues has been dumping part of his workload off on me, either out of laziness or crossed wires I'm not yet sure - which I'm less than happy about.

Bob, on the other hand, has been in his job a week and has received a pay rise, the jammy bastard.  He now earns $235 dollars a day despite doing (his words, not mine) absolutely fuck all all day.  I can't help but regret that I've never taken that much interest in the world of computers.

Paddy and John, fellow inmates from the caravan in Walkamin, have staggered broke and bleeding* into town, having had marvelous adventures in a camper van up and down the east coast.  They're now living in County Bondi with approximately fifty percent of the population of the emerald isle.  Went out for a few swift pints with them yesterday.  Well, we had a few swift pints.  They drank half the pub.  They were very happy when we left them.

We're moving out of Kings Cross to a place in the city centre tomorrow.  Will be glad to go.  There's nothing especially wrong the place we're at, save for a very narrow kitchen and a curious profusion of Italian charvas, but for some reason my entire time here I've felt like I've been in the way.


*may be a slight exageration.

City of Lights

For the fourth time since leaving the UK, I am now gainfully employed.  This time it's for a company called DealBoard as a customer service and administration manager.  It basically sounds like I'm going to get shouted at all day by people who're annoyed that their electric butter knife is late being shipped out.  There's also a small issue in that the position is permanent and - barring some sort of intervention by a higher power - I'm getting kicked out of here in about 12 weeks.  I therefore had to, well, not lie exactly, but be slightly conservative with the truth in order to get the position.  I'm feeling bad about this as they seem a canny bunch, but unfortunately finances dictate that I'm going to have to be slightly ruthless.

Bob is also employed.  He in fact got a job approximately half an hour after me, which was pretty much the perfect outcome for him as it meant he got to prove wrong my assertion that he'd find work before me without having to undergo any undue stress or money problems.  He's working for the star casino, the same company as he was last time he was here, only this time as a floor walker.

We returned briefly to the blue parrot yesterday.  It was the youngest of the Harrison brothers 20th birthday, so we felt it was only right to go and make an offering of tequila.  The place is more or less the same as it was when we left it, except that most of the faces had changed (naturally).  That said there were a number of people there who I'd apparently met back in January who I didn't know from Adam - though given where my head was at the time, this probably isn't surprising.

We're in the middle of the Vivid festival.  It's basically the same as Durham's Lumiere festival only played out on a far larger scale and in a place that people might have actually heard of.  It's also national reconciliation week, where every white Australian is required by law to cast their eyes to the ground, awkwardly kick at the ground with one foot and have a bloody good think about what they did*.

Currently feeling slightly homesick.  The weather is very reminiscent of England in that it is constantly pissing down.  Never mind, it'll pass.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton.

* Please, please, please note that I don't want to make light of the often abhorrent treatment of Australia's indigenous population.  Rather at the wishy washy tendency of modern politicians to offer apologies and kind words for past wrongs, rather than any sort of tangible effort to tackle the very real and visible problems that continue to blight many of these communities.  I accept that societies need to talk about these issues openly and frankly, but if all your doing is talking, then what you're essentially doing is indulging in a sort of smug, liberal circle jerk.