The big relax

Had a trial last night at a restaurant along Hastings Street. Bit of a posh place (like all of Hastings,) that sells main meals that are smaller than a child’s closed fist. I was on the bar- my forte after having spent years on the bar at T.G.I. Friday’s BazVegas and with a *cough *cough* cocktail knowledge of 200+. Lauren is on the floor, that’s incredibly elite hospitality speak for waitressing dontcherknow.
It went well, we both got the jobs and the pay ain’t too shabby either, as well as a whole honcho of nice little perks that you could only get in a town as small as Noosa. One example being last night when work was over we went as a group to a local bar that was holding a ‘hospitality’ night. Basically means that if you work for one of the restuarants on the strip you get free drinks and free entry and introduced to a whole bunch of Noosa’s party going locals. Pretty sweet.
On the downside, there have been numerous reportings of ‘bashings’ late at night in Noosa. I guess this comes with the territory of being a small town in Queensland. Locals can be a bit rough around the edges and bogan. To be fair though, the same things happens in Basildon, and Liverpool -in fact my first ever night in Liverpool saw me getting my nose busted for being a ‘fookin’ southerner,’ so I’m kinda versed in the drill. Just means I won’t go spouting off like a lush at one in the morning. I’m certain we’ll be fine. Unless of course, the locals who would be interested in bashing someone for not being from their tiny town have read this blog and, after having got someone to help them out with the polysyllabic words, will come hunting for me with their surfboards raised.
Only joking locals, I know you can really read.

Walking back from Noosa Heads through Noosa Wood yesterday, Lauren came withn a few swings of her foot to booting a snake in the head.

Luckily I saw the camoflagued reptile in time and stopped what could have been a very bad development to the day. Worse still, Lauren was wearing flip-flops and has yet to develop leather-like skin to protect her feet from attack. Adding to the terribleness of the incident, after subsequent research I think the snake may have been capable of a deadly venomous attack. Yowzers.

Got a trial in a bar along Hastings Street tonight in Noosa. Don’t see why it won’t go well, it’s pretty much a relaxed bar job and as nightlife is next to non-existent in Noosa, I think the place closes before eleven even on Saturdays. All helpful towards our Central American Adventure.

Speaking of which, learning Spanish has become relatively high on our priority list. It’s meant to be a really easy language to ‘get’ but I suck so bad at languages. Trust me, I went to a languages school and 6th form, I know for sure how bad I suck at learning a foreign tongue. Notwithstanding, I am going to give Espaniol a good crack and we’ve bought a book and everything.

In terms of saving for the trip, we’re considering moving out to Sunshine beach and into an apartment with a girl from our hostel called Lucy. She’s from Holland and is trying to emigrate out here, and might have a spare room at a snip[ of the price we’re paying now, the only problem is that it is a mission and a half to get to Hastings Street from there. We shall see.

Adios for now.

I don’t know if regular readers would have got this but Australia isn’t for us. There, I said it. I’m an English person and I. Do. Not. Like. Australia.

I’m not even ashamed.

Therefore, we have devised a plan. It is rather elaborate but it will certainly get us well away from this country.

We are going to Guatemala -once rated one of the most dangerous places in Central America, although it has apparently calmed down significantly now. We will then work our way down to El Salvadore eating tortilla’s and refried beans as we go until we hit San Salvador, at which point we will fly back up to LAX and continue with our round the world ticket.

I’m shaking with excitement at what this new development will bring. The original plan was to spend 6 months here (until May) and then go Fiji-LA-NY-Home. But now, we’re going latin, baby. Arrrrrrrrriba!

Look forward to your postcard mama.

Bit of an odd turn of events yesterday, allow me to elaborate.

We heard on the grapevine of our hostel owner that a resort down the road was looking for cleaners for a bit of casual work, we went down that night, but the management and reception team had all disappeared for the night. 

The following day

After having spent a seemingly fruitless hour or two in Noosa Junction looking for jobs (including one bakery owner who tried to explain to Lauren that using the till would take too much training than 2 months work could provide- even though the owner had failed to spell ‘Staff Wanted’ correctly on the sign on the door) when we were on the free holiday bus back to our hostel. On the way, we remembered the cleaning job and promptly hopped off at the resort to inquire.

Once there, the site manager told us that we were looking for (name eludes me, we’ll go with Beth.) He lead us to Beth who was stripping clean one of the appartments, and she lead us into one of the bedrooms to show us how to do the job. Lauren looked a sight in tiny dress and massive Chanel bag doing hospital corners on a big double bed. We got our technique down when the phone rang; A cafe from Noosa Junction wanted us to come in for trials, me at 2:30 that day, and Lauren at 8:30 the next morning. I made my excueses and left Beth and Lauren to clean more appartments, I had to go home and get washed up. Lauren would later show me the $50 check we were paid with. Brilliant.

Once at the trial I was greeted with a less than friendly manager. He had read my C.V. and I assume he wanted to throw me in at the deep end and see if I sunk. I didn’t but that doens’t mean I don’t think the guy is a dick for trying to find out. Without any instruciton on anything, and as soon as I was wearing one of their red and white logo’d Tees, he pointed one fat finger to a newly arrived guest and rasped for me to serve her. Uhu.

It went well enough, I messed up once or twice, but considering I wasn’t given any training and was expected to just get on with serving customers I think that’s not too bad. I finished at 4 with the promise that he’d call me.

Lauren’s trial started at 8:30 this morning, she’s still there which can only be a good, if a little bit of a cheeky, sign. In fact, that’s why I’m in an internet cafe now, I had a mild wave of paranoia so came to the cafe to check- this is the same girl who has walked over half a mile past our hotels on innumerable occasions after all. I stood across the street, feeling like an insanse stalker, and caught a glimpse of her on the restaurant floor.  

The Queenslanders that I have met thus far (and it is a struggle I tell you, the majority of the people in the internet cafe and high street at the moment are either English or Victorians/New South Wales’ers on their holidays,) seem to be a little, bogan. Sorry QLD’ers but I’m sure you’ll find it hard to dissagree that some of your fellow statesmen come across as a little hillbilly redneck. Especially the toothless youth on the bus yesterday who I struck up conversation with and had such a horrific drawl to his voice that I couldn’t make out a word he was saying. I could just nod along and hope he wouldn’t take offence. He might have done, but who knows?

After five days of luxurious pampering, and I do mean pure luxury, we now come back to the half-reality of backpacking good and proper.

I know my posts have been non-existent from the past few days, so I’ll get going quick snap to bring you all up to speed.

Lauren’s family came over from home to Noosa, on the Sunshine Coast in Southern Queensland. Ray, Caroline, George, Megan, Richard, Amy, Barbara, Pauline, Terry, Gemma and Steven. Quite a mob of us. Something that was pretty amazing though was the surprise visit of Lauren’s sister Kristy and her boyfriend Wayne. This had been kept perfectly secret from both Lauren and I (not the easiest thing consideringthe revealing nature of facebook,) even though I knew a day before Lauren when I overheard a very awkward moment when a certain unnamed uncle nearly let the whole ball drop.

We were put up in a beautiful appartment overlooking the beach, which we subsequently spent nearly every day on. It was great to see everyone after 6 1/2 months, even if it did feel to us all that we’d only seen each other yesterday when the week came to an end.

Our NYE celebration consisted of a BBQ (Ray’s specialty as I’m sure most of my family know,) and drinks in the appartments, before going down to the beach just after midnight for a spot of near skinny dipping. Boxer shorts and bra’s abound (and that was just on me,) as the men made a base in the sea for the girls to climb on to make a huge, 2009 human pyramid. Swimming in the sea at night while drunk is not recommended, but it is very fun.

So now we move back to becoming ‘real’ backpackers again. All of the family have moved on either to Melbourne (boo!) or home, and we have booked into a hostel in the poorer side of town. Don’t worry though, 2 bedroom flats there still cost upwards of $1000,000. We begin our search for work soon too, just something for the next three weeks or so to give us a cash boost for Fraiser Island and Sailing the Whitsundays before heading further north.

A special thank you to Lauren’s family for being so generous and not looking too disgusted at Lauren and I when they saw us dressed a dirty travelling hippys every day for a week.

Oh, and I saw a koala in the wild. Woot!

With a very special mention to Mum, John, Uncle Dag, Jason , Sam, John -Anthony, Sofia, Joe and of course the odd little Santa Clause doll we put under the tree each year. I miss you all in equal measures.Happy 2009 everyone!

 I will be the first to admit that I have been exceptionally lazy with putting pictures up on the blog. Today though, on a hungover Boxing day while I’m waiting for Lauren to finish work so we can go out for yet another night of Christmas drinks with our mates, I have finally got round to putting some up. These are are Christmas photos from yesterday. I thought I’d add one of my ‘Mo as well for any of you who might not have seen it on Facebook.

I feel the pictures do justice to the day we had, even the slight blurry out of focusness on some of them are indicative of the amount of alcohol that was quaffed.

Christmas is here in Oz. It’s Christmas Eve and a scorching 29 degrees outside.

Spent past few days with Midge and the kids in Croydon. Saw Trevor for a little while but he finished work late and had to leave early the next morning. Midge spoiled us rotten, I feel like a stuffed turkey after all the food and drink of the last two days.

Today Lauren got off of work early and the two of us are working out the best time strategy for the evening. My mate Amit is having us over for dinner, and no doubt a couple of sherries, at eight. I’m not entirely sure where his house is, but like I say it is searingly hot outside so it’s no problem having to stroll around in the sunshine.

Big day tomorrow, another day of eating and drinking to the extreme.

This has swung around incredibly fast, it doesn’t seem like over six months ago that I waved goodbye to my mum at Heathrow airport. Cannot wait to get to Queensland, I really feel like that’s what we be the ‘real’ Australia for me.

Merry Christmas one and all have a fantastic day tomorrow!

Ho. Ho. Ho!!! xxx

Blessed with our first real hot day today in Melbourne, a reasonable 24 degrees. Rumor has it that it’s going to 30 tomorrow, but this being Melbourne, that could end up being snow.

Plans for today, we’re going to go to the botanical gardens and sit in the sunshine once it cools down a little. I wanna get a bit of a sushi picnic going but not sure on the risk of walking from nearest sushi bar to gardens and having to eat warm California roll. Big no no.

Went out on Friday night with some of Lauren’s work buddies. Started in Bimbo’s on Brunswick street, the place was packed with utter bogans so we skipped off after eating. I made a mistake of getting a ‘spiced lamb pizza’ which was basically a kebab on a pizza base. I smelled good for the rest of the night. We then went to the Black Pearl, a trendy little cocktail bar just down the road a little. The music in there was a pretty refreshing blend of indie and dance that was nice to hear after two straight weekends of techno.

Considered going out last night but was a bit too hung over to get it going. Ended up watching Back to the Future III and Scrooged. Both are awesome films to make me think of Christmas back home.

Speaking of thinking of Christmas back home, I had a full on hallucination yesterday morning. I could see myself in my kitchen, walking through to the fridge and opening it up to all the wicked food that I know is in there right now because of J.C’s birthday. Brie, Camembert, Ham, Nuts, Chocolate, Fruit, Beef, Stilton. The list could go on indefinately. The day dream was so strong that I could almost taste it, lucky I wasn’t driving a car or anything.

Anyway, I got so excited about all the food that I immediately ran to Safeway and bought a wheel of brie and some fatty sausage, and began noisily devouring them. That abated my homesickness a little. I feel tomorrow I may have to get some roast beef and horse raddish, finally cumulating in me eating an entire turkey on Christmas eve.

Plans for the big day are coming together, we’re dropping off our money today for the food. We’ve cheekily managed to get out of any cooking and instead just have to turn up on Christmas day (the trains are running a Sunday service) with a case of beer, bottle of fizzy and smiles on our faces. Awesome.

While it is pure vanity and self indulgence for me to self-reference as much as I do, I feel for the purpose of this post it is more than justified.

Last week, when I posted about the moron Australian guy who picked a fight on me and all my mates (firing off insults like ‘your girlfriend is too good looking for you’) I told you that the last I saw of him he was having a heated discussion with a taxi driver.

At the time I wanted to stay just out of sight, but near enough that if he did take his anger out on the hapless cabbie then I could have stepped in. My friends didn’t encourage this though, and were eager to press on. Nothing cowardly, they were just glad, as I was, to be out of it.

I finally left, the taxi driver looked to be giving as good as he was getting in the argument, even though he was a foot shorter and much less broad in the shoulder than idiot Aussie.

Sadly, my friend Rhys was contacted by the police yesterday and had to give a statement, as will we all eventually, due to this imbecile Aussie guy destroying the taxi driver. Apparently, the cabbie was so badly beaten that he has been signed off work for at least a month. The hostel manager where Rhys is staying saw the photos of the driver that the police brought with them and it was meant to be pretty gruesome.

I know it’s not all about me. Far from it. But lacking the ability to get the driver’s perspective and with the scumbag being in jail, it comes to my own feelings on this to be used to fill in the gaps.  I can remember the decisive moment when I turned away from the cab driver and the argument, and I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for the outcome. There was 6 boys or so in our group, it would have been easy enough to overpower the idiot, but we didn’t and now some poor sod has had his face smashed in. Rubbish.

With this in mind, I’m going to try and find some sort of volunteer project to do in Melbourne, hopefully they do something here similar to Crisis Christmas back home, which is a sort of nice refuge for homeless people at Christmas time. I know it won’t help the driver in any way whatsoever, but it will make me feel better. And that’s what this special time of year is all about. Me.