Nine2Five

Sydney, Australia

To my relief, I started my new contract last Wednesday. The first day couldn’t have been a fresher breath of air. Some great little touches to make working more of a pleasure than a chore, there’s unlimited soft drinks, fruity & biscuity snacks and on a Friday night or special occasion – the magic fridge loaded with beers, wines and girls fizz. Not to mention a great team atmosphere and an ethos that encourages imaginative ideas.

The building itself is pretty amazing, it won some kind of Green award for it’s innovative design; solar responsive blinds that block rays entering the building at key times of the day, a worm farm on the roof so the buildings organic waste never leaves the area and a funky water cooling system that negates the need for Air Conditioning throughout the entire building; with exception of the IT data room, which itself is show-cased to visitors with glass walls surrounding a series of LED ridden black server racks. The office is in Sydneys 'Rocks' area which sits on the South side of the Harbour bridge, a nice spot with water views and the open top tourist buses humming by every hour or so.

So with a first day ending in a meal out on Darling Harbour with the team, I was comfortable I was going to enjoy my stay here. The week was bettered even more with the copany quarterly party - a warehouse across the street hired out with bands playing while employees drink yet more free drinks!

That evening set the tone for a weekend of ease... a BBQ on Saturday out in the lovely suburbian part of Paddington, another BBQ and beach day at Bronte for Sunday, before an evening session at the Coogee Beach Palace capped off the weekend.

Call the Police

Sydney, Australia

Thankfully, the inevitable was confirmed on Tuesday when I got the call offering me the new position. Just a little pleased with myself I handed in my 7days notice and went back to work.

A working week followed of catching up with sleep, making preparations for moving into my new place and a pretty random night in the Cooge; dinner followed by several beers and the most dismal performance in a quiz I think I've ever managed. 8 out of 30! But a laugh it was. After that the CBH was playing host to a swimsuit show, which we figured since we were locals and all, we should support this sort of event. We rolled up as the show was about to begin only to find out that it had been postponed, they were kind enough to pour us a free drink for the inconvenience!

With Friday night, came cause for celebration. As well as Aarons birthday, it was my final day at my short-lived employment with the State Government Department. A shame really as with this session, I found I was starting to get to know some of the people I had been working with.

I ran over the 7pm deadline for meeting with my room mates so found myself burning the pavement as I made a cross city dash to a Teppenyaki restaurant.

I arrived at the restaurant as everyone else did, so all that was left to do, was relax with an Asahi and get my catching arm ready for some projectile food throwing. The chefs emerged with hungry audience before them. There were around 18 of us eating the Jap-style banquet.

Some huge prawns kicked off the meal, and after the first taste, we knew the evening was going to be a success. Though as the delicious foods were served, they eventually made way for the flying food varieties; mainly egg and rice. Pretty soon after the chef had thrown some cooked egg, Jarrad (Aarons bro) decided start picking people off with raw eggs, and so began the food fight…

Aaron copped the overwhelming majority of the missiles, and struggled to make many return hits through the convulsions of laughter that had infected him...

Some of the party left as we headed off for a few more drinks, (though after smelling my clothes the morning after, I’m surprised we got in anywhere!) which got progressively more, err, well progressive I guess. The core party whittled down to just two in the end, with Aaron putting out his best moves on a dance floor who’s only other dancer was a 70yr old dude that seemed to be going a bit mental to a Stones cover of ‘Satisfaction’… some headaches were to follow the next day.

Indeed they did, just when the Summer seemed to be showing up. I technically had to move out that Saturday, and though I made some effort, I only managed to get half my stuff to my new residence before it was time to party the night through all over again. This time, in 70’s attire. After some diversions, we arrived at the party in full swing (swingin’ 70’s style that is).

A psychedelic night followed. The guys shirts and ladies attire were truly amazing (if that’s the word?!) and of course, I could wear ‘the rug’ out with pride!

Stumbling in at some unearthly hour, we had partied hard this weekend – more an accomplishment for Aaron whom also just made it into the exclusive ‘Club 27’; he had to go to work on Monday, where, for me, I would just get to laze in the sun… or at least as much as I could in between running around getting the final things ready for my new room.

I did however get to the beach on Tuesday afternoon to soak up some D, before going home, only to look forward to a life of work once more…

Come Back Brighter

Another New Job, Sydney

Late last week, after a couple of days settling into my new job, I got a few calls from various recruitment people that I'd either dealt with the previous week or some of the stragglers a little too late to help. Except one. Jordan called me to ask if I was interested in a roll at a well known contruction firms flagship office in Sydney. Having heard about the company before, I was interested in knowing some more about the role and so went on with the conversation.

3days fast forward, and I'm running from my office near Town Hall to the underground train at 11.35am. Out at Wynyard station I carried on into the Rocks and onto the road the company is based on. My brief map research however had only showed me one side of the crescent shaped road which loops from one side of the harbour bridge to the other. I was walking for 25minutes, around 12more than I actually had to play with before the start of my big interview. I made an advanced call to apologise and things seemed okay once I met with the gents conducting the interview.

Over tea & coffee overlooking the harbour, they fired questions, and I answered them. It all seemed to go very well. Then it was time to make the dash back downtown from my "lunch with friends". I guess I should have tried harder to uphold the lie, but I couldn't resist walking back into the office with a fruit smoothie and slice of cake - which incidentally, no-one clocked considering they all knew where I'd "been". Several hours later, I received a call to tell me that the feedback from the interview had been "very good". My weekend was set to be a good one, with just my final offer to come through before I could throw in the towel early at my tedious role in State Government.

A typical Sydney Summer weekend followed; well, to be honest it started on Thursday night, carried on Friday through till Tuesday after the U2 gig.

Saturday was absolutely stunning though, and with the Sun, I helped Aaron with the pool maintenance in the morning before heading down to Coogee Beach at lunch time for a beachside BBQ and Frisbee-fest.

We tried to do the same on Sunday, but at Bronte beach. The weather was not as good and cloud cover kept things cooler than we’d wished. We did however make it to "Go-Low"! No, not a limbo institution, but a cheap shop selling all kinds of magical stuff. We picked up some inflatables for the pool, a hand saw, some chocolates and a santa hat. All for pennies! Random stuff you may think, and I'd have to agree, but the hand saw did help us massacre the neighbours tree overhanging the pool (it'd been dropping blossom and leaves in the pool clogging the filter, not just cos we were in a destructive mood!). When we were done, things were much better, and of course we got to feel like real men for all that sawing we'd done!

Help the Aged

Telstra Olympic Stadium, Sydney

A day waiting – First thing in the morning, I got to wait for 40minutes for a bus that never showed up, I had to walk into the nearest town to catch a trip to work making me an hour late – something about a union dispute with the buses. Despite being an hour shorter than most other days, work ticked by at it’s usual slow pace, though I was anticipating the U2 show that evening at one of the main sites I’d yet to get to in Sydney.

At 5 o clock I made my way to Central to catch a train to Olympic Park. I was made to wait again as the ATMs had huge queues - I got sick of the waiting and walked around to the Olympic Aquatic centre where I got cash instantly. Then it was time to play drinking catch up with Decca and his friends in the short time left before entering the gig.

Down at pitch level, I walked in to the arena with Kanye West bangin’ out some tunes, he was pretty good in fairness – mixing his rap hits with some dance mixes to keep the performance flowing with flare.

A drinks break between West and the main feature, and then the ageing rockers finally made it from the retirement home to the stage. Hyper on Jack and Coke, the first few numbers were up tempo and got the best response from the crowd all night. A little way in they slowed the show to their own comfortable pace which was nice while they performed classics like “With or Without You” & “One” but with the show lasting 2½ hours, this neutral fan was getting a bit bored. The band made several 3 song encores before finally leaving the Sydney Stage for the final time of the weekend.

It was a good show, don’t get me wrong, but compared to the last time I saw the band 10 years ago at Wembley, they just didn’t have enough mojo to keep me interested in the stage… though maybe because this time they didn’t have a huge lemon on stage – aside from Bono – just jokin’ of course. Thank goodness for Pies, Jack Daniels and Kanye West – and good company more over…


All was left was to stand behind about 45,000 people lining up to get into the train station… Home at 1.30am on a school night… I could see work being a bag of fun the following day.

Real Life

Melbourne Cup Day, Sydney

For my regular blog readers, you might recall my last view from my desk was of the Opera House; this time is not quite so glamorous in that I can see Woolworths (and also, the Town Hall Clock)! So, a little further South in the central business district of Sydney, I’ll get to learn about all of the culture and history (also read “restaurants and bars”) of a new area.

My 2nd day was also Melbourne Cup day, “The Race that Halts the Nation”. A new projector had been installed to coincidentally be ready for the big race as the majority of the department crowded the board room to watch the grand 3200m horse race. I had a few bucks placed on a couple of nags in the company sweepstake and as luck would have it, one of mine – Pop Rock came in 2nd place earning me an 8-1 return on my $2! Sweet.

After the food and drinks in the afternoon, work was pretty laid back throughout the afternoon as most of Australia stayed in party mode. It’s quite a strange atmosphere seeing so many people in a city where the event isn’t even staged, dressed up to the nines in suits, dresses and hats.

Synaesthesia

Sydney, Australia

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to arrive in Sydney 3months and 1week prior to the day you must cease work in Australia, find a 3month contract and begin working to start funding the rest of your life.

Failure to do so, will result in, well, a good old fashioned loss of earnings I suppose. Best of luck old bean…

So after dropping my things off, I headed into the city to begin the search. A quick visit to my old employer, and then applying for anything vaguely suitable I could on the internet job search engines.

My first day or two were fairly fruitless, except for finding a few hours each afternoon to fall asleep as the jetlag tried to haul me back to Europe. Then, some phone calls started coming in, and then an interview for the Monday, however – most jobs were of a much shorter period than I really required – but anything’s better than nothing I reckon.

An easy weekend followed; a Halloween party at my old friends Julian & Dave’s place, a trip back to Copacabana to visit Decca, to enjoy his housemate’s birthday party and bring my old belongings back to Sydney. Sunday saw the welcome return of the Sun, by lunch time we were sat out on the deck sunning ourselves.

Monday, and my first interview – a long and stifling journey out West suited and booted – not much fun, I managed to choke on one of the questions leaving me pretty frustrated and downtrodden for the rest of the day. A couple of other meetings followed in the week though if anything, the market seemed to be getting more stagnant.

Luckily the 1st November rolled round, and everyone decided to start recruiting! I had a barrage of calls, and arranged a few meetings and interviews – one of which while I was taking a rare couple of hours out to get sunned on Bondi beach!

Thursday the 2nd November – exactly 3months until my VISA runs out, I had all but dismissed the idea of getting a 3month contract, and instead was thinking I’d be getting several shorter term contracts. At 10am I sat an interview, it went well and within an hour I was working! Mainly just induction stuff, but I got paid for the interview, and got all that dull stuff outta the way so I could hit the ground running on Monday morning. The best news, was that my Australian job hunting is now over with and I have employment until my last workable day here! Lucky!

My final weekend, and days off of an epic year rolled around. Still not the richest guy on the planet, I managed to end up in an old favourite; the Slipp Inn, that was serving FREE beer till 9pm as part of it’s annual Summer party, where fire dancers performed in the beer garden, where, ironically enough, it rained too.