Lord of the Kebabs (Auckland, New Zealand)

Culture Shocked

I just ate Wendy's!! I don't mean the "Wendy's" that they have in Australia where they only serve ice-cream deserts, I'm mean the Dave Thomas' Wendy's where you get cheap burgers and frosty's! Wow... that was a refreshing treat I haven't had in almost a year. Yep, its been almost a year.

Anyway, I arrived in Auckland about 7 hours ago and other than seeing Wendy's, lots of Maori people and lots of greenery, a few Lord of the Rings spin off businesses (Lord of the Kebabs), it seems a lot like Australia. Well, I shouldn't pre-judge. I'll get back to you on the whole New Zealand thing. The people seem nicer though, a guy was looking at our ID's and didn't know where Alberta was. I said "Canada" and he said, "Oh, the only I place I know of in Canada is Calgary." Cool.

We're only here for 14 days and we've booked ourselves for this bus tour that can take anywhere from 11 days to 365 days to complete, so I'd say we're pretty crammed for the next while.

Holy Shit!!! Sean Astin just walked in the internet cafe!!!!!!! Swear to God!!!!!!! I think he just ran out the back door though because there was a rowdy group of guys outside. I'm a huge Goonies fan (I still haven't had a chance to watch LOTR 3), he was gone like that, I wish I could've gotten his autograph or picture!

Bogged

Back to Aussie stuff. Fraser Island, as I was saying in my last blog was a great time. What it is, you go onto this island that's mostly made up of sand. Captain Cook called it "Great Sandy", he was right. We were with a great group of people, there was eleven of us and we all rode together in a 4WD Land Cruiser. So what happens is that you get a Land Cruiser and explore the island by yourselves and camp there for 2 nights.

In the 3 days that we were there we saw Lake Mackenzie where the water was so clear and the sand was so white! The sand was really fine and you could clean your jewelry and exfoliate yourself. There's this old ship that was stranded on the island in the 1960's and it just sits there corroding away, its the coolest thing. We climbed to the top of this place called "Indian Head" where we were able to see sharks and manterays swimming in the ocean and out in the distance we could see whales spraying out water from their blowholes.

Bogged is an aussie term for getting stuck. That's what happened to us a few times. Most of the time you drive right on the coast where the sand is hard, avoiding the saltwater of course. There were obviously times though when we had to get to different places on the island and had to go through thick piles of sand, its like driving in snow, you get stuck. By the end of our trip we had a system down pact, as soon as we got stuck we all knew to quickly get out of the car and push! There's no sense in trying to go back and forth, you just get stuck more! We probably were able to free ourselves in a matter of 45 seconds.

Like I said, its all about the group. I gotta mention them because if we would have been camping with a bunch of losers I wouldn't have had as much fun. There was a great mix of cultures and nationalities with us, a couple from England with Indian and French background. 2 Germans, 3 native English and one guy, Jackov (yep, its it sounds like Jack-off, poor guy, traditionally pronounced Yack-ov) who's born in Switzerland but has Italian and Serbian background. Jack can speak English, Swiss-German, German, Italian, Serbian, French and Spanish! He was the entertainment of our group and loved to talk and make jokes and had a great zest to him. Everyone kinda picked on him though just because he was kinda cocky in an innocent way. He finally had enough when we all ganged up on him for using 7 sugars in his one cup of tea... you had to be there kinda moment.

Jaded

So after our little safari, we went sailing on the Whitsunday Islands on a boat called "The Jade". Its not as glamorous as it sounds. Imagine a boat that's 50ft long and normally carries 35 people. Imagine a little carpeted cabin where hundreds of tourists have trampled over and spilled their alcohol on, imagine the smell of it. Imagine a small bed where 3 people have to sleep on together, friends or not. What a lovely boat indeed!

As I was saying earlier, the company counts. Again there was a mix of cultures, Brazilian, Mexican, Spanish, German, English and Scottish. However, this time around everyone didn't mesh and so the trip was a little dry.

Don't get me wrong, we had lots of fun, we went to a really pristine beach (Whitehaven Beach), went snorkelling a couple of times, had an intro diving course (I'm not a fan of it though, feels weird to be underwater like that) and lots of sun bathing. Oh yeah, we didn't sleep on the boat though, each night we were brought to an 4 star island resort and there were dorm rooms there where we could sleep in instead of the boat, we opted for this and man it was worth it. Thanks to Cheryl Reid for giving us the tip!!!

Great Wall of China vs Great Barrier Reef

You can see both of them from outerspace, the difference is that the reef is a living organism, our tour guide from a glass bottom boat tour told us this trivia the other day. We went to Cairns and snorkelled in the Great Barrier Reef. It was really cool. Unfortunatley, Jeremy got seasick and was throwing up in white paper bags on the outer deck of the boat, poor fella. He tried to get into the ocean, but his fright of swimming got to him and went back to the boat.

Anyway, Jenny and I both got underwater cameras and went on a photo frenzy under there. Its a pitty though, a lot of the coral is dying and its looks grey, not as colorful as we'd hoped for.

Wish, I could talk longer but I gotta wake up in 6 hours and start my tour of New Zeland. Talk to you all soon!

Let the games begin! (Airlie Beach, Australia)

Superstar!

Well, its been a long time since I've done one of these. This is well deserved. So, the last time I've written I was just finishing up my job at Customcall. Bear with me, I'm going to do a bit of bragging. Luckily for me, the last 8 shifts or so I was entitled to do the filing of the employee records. You can just imagine how many employees go through that place!!! I'd say the average turnover there is about 2 weeks. I did such a good job that my boss, the lady in charge of Human Resources, brought me to a weekly "firedown" where they award their employees for outstanding performances and crown them as a "superstar" and give us free beer and chips. I was brought 2 weeks in a row and also one a bottle of wine! Not to mention, the 3rd last week there, I was on the top ten list for selling insurance with the highest average premium. Not bad for someone who didn't really try at the job.

After enduring my 3 months at Customcall and recieiving a $500 loyalty bonus, I moved on. My Irish friend Marc, referred to his job that he was just leaving at AAPT. A telecommunications company. I ended up working there for 6 weeks. I was basically calling up small businesses and setting up appointments for our sales reps to meet with them and try to get them to switch to our phone company. It wasn't as hard as selling insurance, I had to get past a lot of receptionists, but at least they were mostly polite and professional with me. I ended up being the best appointment setter that the AAPT small business had ever had. Wow!! I guess all the weeks at an intense outbound call center really paid off. I honestly didn't think that I was that good, I could have tried a lot more, but in their eyes I was a telemarketing god.

The difference between Customcall and AAPT is that at AAPT, it was an office environment and I was the only one doing the telemarketing. So I actually felt some kind of responsibility there and was able to see a difference. As well the the office was pretty relaxed and I could take a break whenever I wanted to and use the internet as much as I wanted.

I felt bad leaving there, my team that I worked with was really kind to me. They took me out for lunch a couple of times and on my last day bought me a going away gift and a card. I even got to choose what gift I wanted!! I asked for the new Angie Stone CD, and film or batteries. Got it all except for the batteries. I had to give them an excuse that I was leaving Australia earlier than planned, otherwise I'd stay the whole 3 months. I honestly would have if my travel plans didn't interupt. But 98% for sure, I will never, ever, ever do telemarketing again.

Olympics 2004

Okay, another cool thing about my work was that a few days before the games began, my work hired a large flat screen tv for the office. It just so turned out that it was right in front of my desk!! So I was able to watch the games for 8hrs a day, no volume though. The thing is, being in Australia, all I watched was the Australian team, winning medals left, right and center. When I did see it with volume all they ever talked about was how Athens compared to Sydney 2000 games. "Blah, blah, blah, we're so good, we're 4th in the world, blah, blah..." I guess they have a right to be proud, but they could have shown other countries, seeing as though this country is full of other races. I'd say its much more multicultural than Canada. the thing is, in Australia they have free television channels, 5 of them and only 1 out of the 5 was broadcasting the games. Most of the time it was swimming that was on the television. Ian Thorpe (I'm assuming you've heard of him) was winning all the time and they replayed his events all day. He ended up being the Australian with the most medals ever in history.

Guess what? I saw him!! Jenny, Jeremy and I were walking down the streets in the city (downtown) area and him and 3 friends just casually strolled by us. It was a Friday night, about 2 weeks ago now, about 10 days after the games had ended. I bet they were going to go get piss drunk in some bar and pick up some women cause they're Ian Thorpe and friends. Anyway, we were walking and Jenny and I both focussed on his face and he made eye contact with me. I kept my eyes on him until he passed, just thinking to myself "I know that guy from somewhere". Then Jenny and I looked at each other and paused... "That's Ian Thorpe!". We didn't chase him down the street or anything, just though about it but didn't really have the guts to do it. We were surprised that he wasn't surrounded by and fans or whatnot.

Hey! I know you!

I've been waiting for the last 11 months to bump into someone I know from Calgary. It finally happened. Her name's Natasha Quimby. I went to High School with her, she's a year older than me though, but we have a few mutual friends. I actually saw her when I had first arrived in Sydney but never had the chance to talk to her because I couldn't remember her name quick enough and she had then walked passed me and was gone. This time around, I yelled out "Natasha!", that obviously caught her attention. We talked for about 5 minutes, I bet the whole time she was thinking, 'what are their names again?'.

Now that I've met one Calgarian I know, I can relax. I've seriously been anticipating it for the longest time. On another note, its really weird that in a big city with 4 million people you actually bump into people you know every now and then. The weird thing is, I didn't know that many people in Sydney.

Hen's Night BoyToy

Just a quickie on things that kept the 3 of us busy and entertained while we struggled to make a living in Sydney. Let me tell you, its a huge relief to be done working and just back to backpacking. Things became monotonous there and really boring. This sometimes turned into tension and stress. I gotta remember that I'm travelling and should be having a good time. So anyway, we all tried to make the best of our time there. We tried to stay tourists while being locals.

Sydney Aquarium: This place is huge, with platypuses, a crocodile, sharks, manterays, clown fish, blue cods, etc, etc, etc! It was really worth going to.

Harbour Bridge: For 9 bucks you go up a portion of the bridge, its what they call the 'Pylon'. From there you can get a pretty good view of the city and learn the history of the bridge. For 150 bucks you can climb and go across the top arch of the bridge, Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz recently did it, not to mention lots of other stars that come to Sydney. J, J and I did the one for $9.

Sydney AMP Tower: This is much like any other tower, Calgary Tower, CN Tower, etc. We had a nice lunch buffet up there and ate camel, emu, lobster and all this other really good food! I don't recommend the Camel.

Sydney Opera House: We were able to go to two different shows there. First one was a Nina Simone tribute concert in a quaint atmosphere, the opera house actually has about 6 different venues inside it. Secondly we watched an opera called "The Mikado". A comic opera set in Japan. First opera I've seen since the Phantom of the Opera when I was about 12yrs old. I enjoyed it.

Lion King: Jeremy and I have now been together for 5 years, come this past July. In order for us to celebrate we went to see 'The Lion King' performed live on stage. All I can say is WOW! That was absolutley amazing. If you have a chance to see it at a city near you... please do.

Vagabond Cruise:

Hen's Night = Stagette = Bachelorette Party

Okay, so around the harbour, you can go around on different cruises and see the city by night or day and have dinner/lunch. We chose to do an evening one with a Latin twist. After dinner's served there's a latin dance performance and then they teach some people to do the lambada and then everyone does the limbo. It was pretty cool. However, I assumed that it was going to be full of tourists, not 3 different groups of women celebrating their Hen's Night. As you can imagine the boat was lacking single men, or any men for that matter. Combine that with a bunch of alcohol and loud dancing music and you got single women wanting to have some fun. Well! I never! So J, J and I were standing around and just dancing in our own little corner, next thing you know I'm doing the lambada with about 1 or 2 drunk women. Then 3, then 4 or 5. Okay, okay, its fun to dance with other people, you know, its the 'women's' night party. But the next thing I know there's a tug at my collar, then my camera strap, then the bottom of my shirt. Then there's about 4 women surrounding me all trying to take my shirt off!! Do I look like a male stripper?? That's when I had to say no thanks. If only I were straight...

Setting Off

So I was kinda sad to leave Sydney, for a few different reasons. But I think its time to leave a place when you've gotten into a huge routine of grocery shopping on Sundays, knowing what's on the television each night of the week, giving directions to tourists you see lost on the street, know a good chunk of the different suburbs/communities around the area, etc, etc. I was sad to say goodbye to the family I have there. We all tried to get together one last time before I left. That was nice. We all kinda took the fact that I was in Sydney for 5 months for granted and thought it was much longer than shorter. So towards the end we tried to squish as much meetings as possible.

We had to transport all the items that my cousin Rowena lent us and return it via train to her house. That wasn't fun. We used shopping carts to take these chairs and large blankets and stuff to her house. We weren't allowed to bring the cart unto the train though, Jeremy tried to get it on though and acted naively when he was told he couldn't. We then took out the chairs on the platform and waited for the train on them and took pictures while people staired at us. Hehehe.

We then had to rush to the Post Office to send out a 20kg package to Canada. The office closed at 5pm and we left the house at 4:40pm. We again used a cart and literally ran through our community with this 20kg box. We made it just on time to find out that the box was 2.5kg overweight! Shit! We then had to open the box that we'd already taped up about 5 times around and take out some shoes that we'd all bought in Sydney. In the end it was all good, just had to donate the shoes to Salvation Army.

Our Filippino neighbor Annie who befriended us about a week before she knew we were leaving, it was nice because she made us a nice dinner and we played with her Mestiso son and chatted with her husband. Jenny and her hung for a few days and bonded... kinda. Anyway, the last day we were leaving she came to the flat and was all like "Oh, what are you doing with this, can I have it? oh and this too? this too? Oh, you're not going to take this with you, can I have it?" No wonder she wanted to be friends with us! In all fairness though, she gave me $50 for all the stuff she took. We were actually just going to give it to Salvation Army, but were too rushed. We were able to make it to our bus on time. And here we are...

Paddle, Paddle!!

So our first destination was a little hippy town called Byron Bay. And this is where our games began. Byron Bay is really well known for its surfing and chilling out. That's what we did.

Jenny and I took a beginner surfing course for 3.5hrs. It was really fun, we had this instructor from Israel and whose surfed all around the world. There was only one other guy in our class, Marcus from Switzerland. So we all got lots of attention. I wore a wetsuit for the first time in my life. Man, are those things tight! I felt kinda silly in it at first because my belly was hanging out. (I've gained a little wait since being in Sydney... oh well). They really keep you warm in the water though. It was actually raining, but you don't even feel or notice it, I think it was more exciting to surf in the rain.

Anyway, all we learned were the simple basics of how to stand up on the board when a wave comes. I was able to do it a few times. At first the Raz, the instructor, pushes you off and tells you when to try and stand. Then he lets you go yourself and you gotta paddle. First off, let me tell you that surfboards are freakin' heavy and after a while you get quite tired, (especially if you were up at 5am to watch the sunrise on the most eastern point of inland Australia that morning, trying to see whales and dolphins... I didn't see any) so by the time that it was time for me to paddle I had no energy at all. Raz kept yelling at me to "paddle, paddle!". That and among a few other things I have to work on, but I can totally understand how people get addicted to it, its all about waiting for the wave and executing it. I was so thrilled when I was able to just stand up when the waves came, I wanted to do it again and again, just keep trying. Hopefully... one day.

After all that working and living in Sydney we needed to just chill. We ended up buying some funky herbal tea at this all natural store. It was supposed to be like a eurphoric/aphrodisiac type thing. All it did was give me a headache and make me wanna sleep. However, we did get to do some partying with our hostel mates and have a grand old time Byron Bay. I can't let you know (again), how nice it is be travelling again and meeting new people from around the world.

Fraser Island

I gotta go... this is probably too much to read anyway, I'll tell you all about this in my next blog. Later.

Life in the Big City (Sydney, Australia)

Ahhhh... to write again. How nice. I appologize for not keeping this up to date (like you care). Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, sorry, but I don't have too many exciting stories or adventures to tell.

Livin' Large

So, I've been living in Sydney now for about 3 months. People think that living in a big city is really glamrous and its like paradise. Well, let me tell you! Sure, it has its perks to see the Sydney Opera House every day on your way to work, and sure you get to experience the exciting nightlife. The thing is, to see a show at the Opera house costs about $75 - $150. To have a great night out will cost you a day's wages. I guess its worth it, but when you're trying to pay rent and save money to go travelling, the big city just turns out to be a big hassle.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to be living in the world famous SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA. I must admit, to get a life set up here, an appartment, a job, friends, a car (well, I used to have a car), its quite an accomplishment. How many people can say the same?

However, I think that people get this illusion that coming here though is a dream. Its winter right now, I realize at home in Canada I'm used to -20C weather, but either way, its cold here! And really, I'm not doing much different stuff here than home, everything is basically the same from home, just a different setting. I guess at home I wouldn't be able to hang out with a bunch of foreigners, but we're all stressed about making money and paying expensive bills. 'Welcome to the real world', I suppose.


CustomCall

Hi, my name's Dean, I'm a customer relations manager calling from Customcall on behalf of Westpac. How are you? I just need to let you the know the phone call is being recorded. And the reason for my call today is to discuss the information that was sent out to you in the mail a while ago call "FUTURE COVER".

These are the words that haunt me each day and many other backpackers day in and out for 8hrs a day, 5 days a week, for 3 LONG months. However, for some of us the hopeful 3 months of being paid $17+ per hour only turns out to be 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, etc. The following is a list of people that all started the same day as I did(we all trained together), in order of departure dates. I've only got 3 weeks left for myself!!! How time flies!

We all started April 19, 2004

1) May 4th - Stacey, a sweet Canadian girl with braids, hardly got any sales and found a waitressing job.

2) May 13th - Scot Macdonald, the Scotsman who found a labouring job.

3) May 14th - Cheryl, also Scottish, the first girl Jeremy and I ever talked to and still do, she's currently working at another call center, but selling teddy bears for charity, much better. She'll be leaving Aus soon :-(

4) May 14th - Travis, our gay friend we met from Cochrane, Alberta. The job really got him down and persuaded to go home to Canada early. Ahhh... good ol' Calgary.

5) May 14th - Craig, English. He preferred to leave and do fruitpicking instead!

6) May 17th - Liz, a dear friend we met from Ireland. (You'll see her other half Erica further down the list). After being bombarded with too much 'coaching' from various figures and being transferred to sell Accidental Death instead of Future Cover, she just stood up and said "I QUIT!!!!".

7) May 28th - Vicki, English. She just didn't come back one day. I bumped into her at a bar, she found a better job!

8) June 1st - Jeremy Garcia (this would be the Jeremy you know). After much, much stress and continued effort of just trying to stay alive, he found another job working at a different call center where he basically got laid off after 3 days. But now after a 2 week rest, he's back in the swing of things at an inbound call center where he gets about 1 call every 10 minutes.

9) June 4th - Jen, my old partner in crime from England who used to sit beside me and play Bingo, Hangman and gossip about all the bastards and bitches we spoke to on the phone. After waiting for her Birthday to arrive, she couldn't hack any more housewives yelling at her on the phone. Last I spoke to her, she was sitting on a beach somewhere North of Sydney.

10) June 4th - Erica, Liz's partner (also Irish), who, after Liz left, felt really stressed out and pressured to sell, sell, sell! She ended up getting a sore tooth and required a root canal. Too Expensive! So her and Liz left for Thailand for a couple weeks and then home. Hope you two are enjoying the comforts of Ireland.

11) June 25th - Leslie, a Scottish friend who despises trying Filippino food but insists we eat some Haggis. After being threatened to be fired by her team leader due to lack of sales, she was able to get 3 interviews and 2 new jobs in a matter of a few days. As we speak, she probably sitting in a calling center selling... INSURANCE over the phone!!! But at least her job's not in danger.

12 - 15) Mike, Thomas, Jocelyn, and ME! We're all still here. Thomas is a permanent resident, who will be here for much longer than us, good luck to him. Not to mention, good luck to me... please?


Belated Birthday

GUILT TRIP:

No, I'm not saying Happy Belated Birthday to you. This is what you should be writing in my comment book. My birthday was May 16th. Don't worry, I'm not too fussed about it. Thanks to those of you who actually sent me an email and a card and stuff. Karen - you were the only one to actually send one on the actual day, Thanks!

Anyway, it was a weekend. A bunch of us from my work went out to a free Jazz club, the drinks were pretty expensive though. The band found out if was my birthday and the guy incorporated my name into his song. That was cool. Afterwards, we went to a drag queen show and did a bit of dancing. Fun.

I got a couple presents and cards from people here. Jeremy got a bunch of my film from Asia developed and some slippers. I went for a nice Filippino dinner at my Aunt's house and ate quite well.

Jenny

About 4 weeks ago, my best friend Jenny arrived from Canada. How exciting was that to see her! Too bad, she arrived a couple days earlier than I was expecting and I couldn't be at the airport when she landed. My mobile phone kept ringing at 7am in the morning, but no one was on the line when I answered. I kept thinking that it might be Jeremy or his work, because he was supposed to work at 7am. Anyway, at 7:30am, Jenny finally got through to me, "It's Jenny! Why aren't you at the airport??". Turned out she mistook the dates on her itinerary and came on June 2nd, not June '04.

We've been having a lot of fun on the weekends, going out and partying. Its been great just to hang with old friends (Jeremy included). We spent 3 days in a row at Darling Harbour and watched the Jazz Festival. Back home, each year we always try to go to the Jazzfest, but never get around to it. Here it was FREE, that doesn't happen often. It was cool, because people sit around the dock with blankets and wine and watch the bands playing on this stage that's on the water.

Jenny's now gotten settled into Sydney as well and working at a shoe shop. We all can't wait to start traveling up the East coast. Damn work!

Speaking of old friends, I was able to hook up again with Nicklas, my friend from Sweden that I met in Cambodia. Its good to know that the friends I've met around the world are keeping in touch.

Cambodia Update

Just a quick word about this. Laura, my friend that I worked at the orphanage with and who was really dedicated, has kept in touch with me as well. She told me a while ago that the orphanage, after lots and lots of turmoil, has been disbanded. Good news is, most of the children are being re-united with their families (most of the kids' parent(s) are still alive, but had to give the kids to the orphanage due to circumstances). I just hope that all is well. I'm saddened by the fact that I may not see most of them again, when I go back to Phnom Penh, but that's just me being selfish. I still think of them quite often.

D.J.Catering

D.J. = David Jay
J = Jenny
D = Dean
J = Jeremy

Anyway... DJ, is my little 7 month old nephew. Son of my cousin Rowena. He was baptised 4 weeks ago, on the Sunday after Jenny first arrived. Rowena wanted all 3 of us to be at her house at 9am to help out with the Christening. Foolish us went out the night before and didn't get home till 4am. We had to get up at 7:45am! Ouch. Well, we left home late, and didn't get to Rowena's house till about 10:45 because the train system wasn't running and we had to take a bus and a different train. Well, when we got to her house, it turned out she didn't really need us there that early. Anyway, we were all walking to the church and then Rowena's Mother in law drove up and Rowena said, "Oh, instead of going with me to the church can you just go the hall and make sure no one takes anthing." No problem, we don't mind helping out, even though we don't get to see the ceremony.

Next thing we know, the Mother in law starts telling us to cook this and cut that, put chairs here, put this there. Whoa, that came out of no where. We really didn't mind, but we had no idea that we were going to be catering and setting up the reception hall. All 3 of us really enjoy doing it though. It reminded us of planning our friend Lillian's wedding shower.

At first we thought that there was WAY too much food, typical Filippino party. Then when church let out, there was only like 15 people there. Thoughts went through my mind that this was a huge waste of food. Well, I was wrong, there was probably about 100-125 people that came in total. The food was flying off the table and we couldn't keep up! In the end, all mouths were fed and there was enough leftovers for the 3 of us, we didn't have to cook for a week!

My Plans:

After CustomCall, I'll look for work for another 6 weeks. Then the 3 of us are going to travel up the East Coast on a bus tour. Then off to New Zealand for about 2-3 weeks. Then back into Asia. Jenny will depart from Jeremy and I after Thailand, beginnning of November. There J and I will go to Cambodia, Philippines (Christmas with family), Vietnam and Laos. I'll be home in Feb or March. Take care. WRITE ME!!

6 Down... (Sydney, Australia)

Today is my 6 month travelling anniversary! Wow, do you miss me yet?? I bet you're guessing that I've got 6 more months to go, but you're wrong. Jeremy and I have decided to keep going, I'm not going to be home until Feb or March of next year. This gives me more time to stay in Australia and work. Work = $$$ = longer travel time = fun! Well, I guess work doesn't exactly equal fun, especially when its in a call center, phoning people and persuading them to buy life or death insurance. Jeremy and I both have gotten jobs at a busy telemarketing firm, with 500 employees all trying to sell insurance. We just got hired today and start this coming Monday. In the interview they basically told us its a job where we get rejected 97% of the time and we talk about death all day! That'll be good for a morale booster!!! Oh well, the job pays really well and there'll be lots of other backpackers that we'll be with. Wish me luck on my new job. I haven't worked in over 6 months, this will be a definite shock to my system, 5 days/week from 11:45am-8pm. Plus if I opt to, I can work on Saturdays, well sign me up!

Well, that's all for now. I miss writing blogs, I'll try to get online more often.

A Bit Bored (Lakes Entrance, Australia)

Well, for the last few days Jeremy and I have just been driving up the east coast. We've been stopping off at these little towns that don't really have much to offer. We haven't met many travellers along the way so far because there's not that many to meet. We were with a couple from Britain (Andrew and Elle), but unfortunaltey, they've gotten themselves into some car trouble and are now stuck in Melbourne for the time being. They were good fun.

A few highlights we've had was on Phillip Island where we went to this Penguin Parade and watched hundreds of penguins come out of the ocean and walk up the beach to their burrows. We went to this Koala conversation park and saw all these cute koala bears hiding in the trees, there was a little baby one too! We went to Wilson's Promonotory natn'l park, it was a beauty. However, there was way too many wasps everywhere and it kinda freaked us out and so we only stayed one day. Oh yeah, during a hike on Phillip Island we saw a snake! That was pretty scary as well!

Anyway, of course, internet time is limited and costly... see ya.

Inseperable (Melbourne, Australia)

A friend of a friend of a friend...

Well, here I am at Jeremy's Mom's Friend's Sister's house. Last night as Jeremy and I were driving here I was like "Jeremy, aren't you so excited to visit you Mom's, friend's sister's husband Angelo?". He was nice white man who opened the door as we waited on the other side with a potted flower plant. We were surprised to find a white man as we were expecting some Filippino to greet us. Anyway, he's really nice and letting us stay at his house for a couple of nights until we leave for the road again.

Ruth

We'll be heading up towards Sydney tomorrow morning in my mint green station wagon, who've I've appropriatley named 'Ruth'. Oh the stories I could tell about Ruth! But I don't have that much time. Basically: no gas gauge, no temp gauge, faulty speedometer, no interior lights, no horn, no hazard lights. I once ran out of fuel while driving down to do my first (and only) day of grape picking when I had 4 Japanese backpackers in my car. I had to stand on the side of the road and wave down someone to bring me to a gas station. All the damn people just waved back at me like I was a mascot on the side of the road.

I've covered the rusty tailgate with ducktape! It looks pretty good, well much better than the rust I guess.

I will admit though that the engine is fine and has gotten me from Adelaide to Melbourne so far. In Adelaide I had to put up notices in the the hostels to try to find some companions to join me. The first time I put "Canadian guy" on the notes and got no responses. The second time around, after 3 days of waiting by the phone, I put more notes up without the "Canadian guy" and I was swamped with phone calls. Hmmm... go figure? Well, the second time around I also cut up the little slips of paper with the phone number at the bottom of the page, maybe that's what the difference was.

I had a blast with this British couple (Andrew and Elle) and this Dutch girl Marieke. In fact, Andrew, Elle, Jeremy and I will all be leaving for Sydney tomorrow. I've bought a bunch of camping gear and will slowly go up towards Sydney and just see the sights and relax on the beaches along the way.

Inseperable

Well, the other day I got to see Jeremy again, after 4 months and 3 weeks, he was definitley a sight for sore eyes. I waited at the airport for 2 hours, that's called 'frustrating'! Especially when his plane landed on time, but didn't get out of the customs gate 1.5 hrs afterwards. I stood by the 4 doors waiting and waiting, each time the door opened I thought it would be him. "nope, not that one, maybe the next, nope... nope... oh is that?... nope.... ". I was about to get him paged at the info desk cause I thought he missed his flight or something. Not to mention I had to use the toilet the whole time I was waiting, but didn't want to miss him come out the doors. Next thing I know, he comes up behind me and says "Hello".

Adelaide

I definitley had fun there, lots of people say that Adelaide's the boring, weird city. I like it more than Melbourne actually. They were having 3 different large festivals going on while I was there! All really expensive stuff, but it was still cool. The first night of the fringe was free entertainment and a parade. That was cool, I danced outdoors on the university campus where there was DJ Josh (a girl DJ!!). I hung out a lot at the house where I stayed with 3 people from New Zealand and got to know them. They're my sister's friends.

Like I said earlier I grape picked for one day and hated it, and got lost trying to find the place the second day and said screw it. But there's lots of wineries out there and got to visit where Brendon (flat-mate) worked. There's tonnes of orchards and some cool beaches, lots of neat shopping malls and arcades. Adelaide to me, is really a lot like Calgary, a big city but still has that small town feel to it.

Thank-you

By the way, I just want to say thank you to all of you that gave me your condolences. Kind words really do go a long way. Also, my 3 best friends, Jenny, Lillian and Charies were amazing and read my eulogy at the funeral service and helped out my Mom and Jeremy with the food arrangements and stuff. Its so nice to know that even though I'm not there, my friends are still my friends. Thanks guys, love you all.

Qucik Hello! (Adelaide, Australia)

Hi guys, I've been here in Adelaide for about a week now. I've been trying to cope with westernization again, its so expensive here!!! I'm also trying to deal with the death of my Grandma, hopefully you've read my last 2 entries. I also really miss the children in Cambodia and think about them often.

I've been staying at my sister's friends' house. Its Fringe Festival time here, that's fun... but expensive. I just bought an $800 1977 Station Wagon!! I'm about to register it and drive around Australia with Jeremy. I pick him up in Melbourne in about 2 weeks, I can't wait. Until then, I hope to do some work here, I plan on doing some grape picking out in the orchards. Its an honor to pick the grapes that will contribute to the famous wines of South Australia!

Internet's expensive, I won't be able to write or email as much. Take care till next time.