Sun, Sand & Surf... Oh, Bedbugs and Telemarketing As Well!

---

Greetings once more loyal readers. My apologies yet again for the lengthy duration between blogs. Word on the cyberstreet is that Simmo's Tour of BEWDY!! is getting a reputation for more broken promises than a John Howard election campaign, having mentioned several times that I'll be "adding another blog soon". But, in the words of an old mate of mine, Bulwinkle the moose, "this time for sure".

So as far as I can remember when I last left you I had just signed off on my Jackaroo experience and arrived in the Gold Coast - party town full of glitz, glamour, themeparks, nightclubs and slutty charm. Within hours of arriving at the coast I was lying on the golden sand in Surfers Paradise and who should be standing next to me but Steven Bradbury of Australian Speed-Skating and "Dancing with the B-Grade Stars" fame. I knew it was him because he was standing up while everyone else on the beach was lying on their backs. It was at this time that I thought this meant one of two things: either I was going to have a fantastic time on the gold coast as represented in the omen of seeing live and in person one of Australia's handful of Winter Olympic medalists; or I was about to take a massive fall...

For the first 9 or 10 nights on the coast I stayed with Alanna (Vic U17s Wet'N'Wild/Sombrero Alanna). It was so good to see her after such a long time and, as usual, we got along like a house on fire as if we had never left each other. Thanks to Alanna and family for the warm bed, beautiful home cooked meals (Really REALLY good home cooked meals) and Foxtel featuring all day Simpsons and constant Family Guy.

I had about 4 weeks to kill on the coast before Tom was coming up for some time in the sun and it wasn't long before I realised that wandering aimlessly up and down Cavill Avenue wasn't going to keep me interested for longer than a day or two, even with the metre maids sauntering by in their microscopic gold bikinis and cowgirl hats - it's a classy town folks. The aim of the game of course became finding work.

I thought all my Christmas's had come at once when I saw an ad in the paper which read "Bingo Caller Required - Surfers Paradise RSL". I managed to get myself an interview and thought I'd nailed it until I saw Marianne Van Dorsler sitting in the waiting room for the next interview. Fair to say I didn't get a call back.

So with that disappointment behind me I had another disappointment in front of me when I was forced to accept a job as a telemarketer. "How bad can it be?" I thought to myself. "They seem like a young and funky bunch, they have plasma tv's connected to a Juke Box which includes on its play list two Bruce Springsteen songs, they pay $17p.h. plus bonuses. I can do this for a few weeks without any dramas." How wrong I was.

My job was to invade people's privacy in the sanctity of their own home by calling them and offering a "limited time only offer" (which has been running for 9 years but may end any time now...) of 1, 2 or 4 nights away one of 34 Novotel, Mercure or All Seasons resorts for just $29!!! Who wouldn't want that? Plenty of people wouldn't bloody want it. In fact, in the 2 weeks I was there I only managed to find 4 people who did want it. To make matters worse, the plasma screen juke box which I thought would be the saviour was filled day in day out with Robbie Williams film clips. Now don't get me wrong, Robbie Williams is good value, but when crazed women put on an hours worth of Robbie songs/film clips it's just all too much for me. On top of that I had to deal with crazy professional full time telemarketers who get fully psyched everytime they get a sale, want to give you a hi 5 when you get a sale, and at times feel it necessary to harrass the people they have already harrassed by calling them in the middle of their favourite day time soap. I lasted for a total of 9 days (minus one sicky to make a grand total of 8 days). It almost drove me insane. 8 of the worst days of my life. And so, to get my revenge, I waited until after lunch on my final day and then, when everyone thought it would be an afternoon like any other, I unleashed on my unsuspecting colleagues a Bad Ass Country and Western Can o' Whoop Ass!!! The final two hours of my time at Interactive Customer Solutions was filled with Garth Brooks, Keith Urban, Big & Rich, Brooks & Dunn and countless other Nashville Superstars. The groans of pain from my fellow telemarketers as they tried to go about their work as if nothing was wrong was hilarious. All the while I bopped away and doubled my weekly sales tally (I got one sale). Never again will I don the headset and engage in such a ridiculous occupation.

The other job that I managed to secure was slightly more satisfying. With the help of Alanna I got myself a job in Promotions at ever so classy Gold Coast establishment "Cocktails and Dreams". My job was to stand out the front of the club from 9pm to 3am every Friday and Saturday and chat to random people as they came past (with a strong emphasis on hot chicks, a policy specifically directed by management and stringently followed by yours truly) and try to get them into the club. If worst came to worst I had the license to offer free entry and by said hot chicks a drink and entertain them for a short while if that was required to sweeten the deal (and why wouldn't that sweeten the deal?!). For all this job may sound like a dream, in true Simmo style I seemed to manage to get more blokes than girls into the club and made mates with numerous regulars and spent a good amount of time chatting to them rather than attempting to coax the club's chosen demographic through the door. Still, work is work and it paid a dollar and allowed me to meet some quality people.

One such person (fantastic segue by me - that's the stuff that authorial dreams are made of) was Em, the door/cloak room attendant at the club. She was a gorgeous blonde, later to become a gorgeous brunette, and we hit it off straight away. Em was nice enough to offer me a a mattress at her place for a week before the boys came up which was so good of her - you have no idea how much it means to a traveller to be offered a warm, clean and friendly place to stay. I had a ball staying with Em and her housemate Danica who, ironically enough, is best mates with Bruce Springsteen's number 2 fan Brett Geeves (and a big hi to Geevesy - I know you're reading this) as well as a few other Tasmanian Tigers that I've played cricket with and against in the past like Travis 'Birty' Birt, Xavier Doherty, Tim Paine etc. It's a small world. Thanks again to the girls for their hospitality!

What made having such a nice place to stay even more of a God send was that for the previous week I had stayed at "Cheers Backpackers - where everybody knows your name but nobody changes the sheets or cleans the kitchen". In fairness to my fellow travellers who have told nightmarish tales of hostels in Asia, I couldn't call Cheers the Hostel from Hell, but it was definitely from a neighbouring suburb. Apart from the horrendously uncomfortable beds, the dusty looking rooms and the cockroach infested kitchen, the place was full of Irishman who found it necessary to return to the hostel at all hours of the morning and sit outside yelling, screaming and cracking jokes till the sun came up. I'm sure their jokes were actually funny, but I'm sure you'll understand that my sense of humour was battling at 4:30am. There were at least 4 of the 7 nights where I had less than 3-4 hours sleep. But that wasn't all. I had a fella move into the dorm after I'd been there for a few days. I knew this bloke had been staying at Cheers already and found it funny that he had been moved. Funny that was until I saw a bottle of medicine looking lotion stuff that he proudly kept on the dresser which read "Benzemul Acid: For the treatment of scabies and body lice." Fan-f*ckin-tastic I thought. Just what I need to cap off my week. Turned out that poor old Olly, the portly Englishman, had been "chewed" as he put it by bugs in room 8. Just quietly he would've made a decent meal for those bugs. I was most appreciative of management sending him into my room - better than the leppers they had in room 10 I guess.

So that was my first few weeks in the Gold Coast. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But things were only to look up. With the news that my visit from Tom had turned into a visit from Tom, Jase, Woggies and Logo, and their arrival imminent I thought things wouldn't get any better. That was of course until...

---