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Long Haired Hippie
This was a couple weeks before the cut. Hello everyone and happy belated Canada Day from Australia! I’ve been working the past couple of weeks in Fremantle (a 30 minute train ride south of Perth) in a food processing factory. I wish I could say that it was glamorous work, but that would be a lie. I got the job through a guy who advertised on the backpacker’s job board. The deal is that you stay at his place and you have a job at the factory, you leave his place and you leave the job. The house is very nice and at the time I needed work so badly I didn’t really care much about anything else, but now that I’ve been here for a little while, I am starting to have second thoughts.
The problem is that I am only getting about 30 hours a week, and at the wage I am receiving, it’s enough to pay rent and buy groceries, but little else let alone saving for the Europe leg of the trip. I have unfortunately signed a contract and have a bond already paid with a clause stating that I must give 4 weeks notice before leaving if I want to get my bond
back, but if I can find work else where then I will leave whenever I can start work. In the long run, I can make the money for the bond back in a week with your average job so it doesn’t make any sense to stay if I do find other work.
The money thing aside, the house simply has too many rules! The owner Arthur (a Greek guy) is super anal about EVERYTHING! And his wife is almost as bad, but she is passive aggressive to the extreme, dropping little hints about everything. Beds are to be properly made every morning (we leave for work at 5:15 in the morning) or they will be made for us (yea, they come into our rooms daily to make sure that they aren’t messy), we have certain times when we can cook (my roommate and myself are lucky enough to have dinner cooking times between 4PM-6:15PM), 5 minute showers where you MUST wipe down the entire washroom after showering, and lockdown/silence after 10. Also if any one thing is out of place (like a chair) you get told where is should be properly placed. Look at the pictures of
Perth2
On the way to Kings Park the instructions taped all over the place and you’ll start to get the feel for what I’m talking about.
Now, I can understand why there must be rules to keep a place clean and operating, but I don’t feel like I can really relax here. It’s not like a hostel where you have some modicum of a personal space, even if you’re in a dorm room with 15 other people. I kind of got this vibe when I met him at took a look at the house (he strategically had us take a look around when all the other roommates were at work) but like I said before, I needed the work (still do honestly) and just went with it. The lesson I’ve learned from this? Go with your instincts!
I must admit that I am feeling a little homesick and kind of down, though I suspect the majority of that is simply the fact that I am making peanuts or paycheques at work and don’t really feel at home at home. My friends at the hostel are keeping ears to the ground for fulltime work in the city and are going to let me know what they
hear, so that’s something at least. I will also be going to get my haircut on Monday (it’s been almost 8 months since the last cut) so that I can go out and look for work, since long haired hippie isn’t exactly the first impression you want to give a prospective employer.
The weather here has been rather poor, rainy and storming one moment, the bright and sunny the next, though the periods of sun rarely last long. I did get a chance to go out to the King’s Park last weekend and got a fair number of shots as you can see, but I’ve yet to get to a beach and dunk in the Indian Ocean, perhaps the weather will behave this weekend.
Anyway, I’ll get out of my rut soon enough. By hook or by crook I will get myself to Europe and continue on with my travels!
PS: I have a job on the weekends as a Glassy now! I work 9PM-4AM Fridays and Saturdays in Perth at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow. The work is not too tough, though when your tray gets full it can start to get pretty heavy, and if there
are a lit of people it can get difficult to maneuver. In 2 weeks I will be leaving the house of 1000 rules and move back into the hostel. Thomas (a German friend of mine) will be leaving in 2 weeks and the warehouse he works at will require someone to replace him, he will talk to his boss, but he thinks that there should be no problem having me replace him (with all of my warehouse experience from back home).
I'll let you know how things are going in the next little while.
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