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Published: April 20th 2012
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Today is the end of my second week in Jasper so it's about time for another update. This entry should be considerably shorter than the last one, however I do tend to find a lot of words to write about everything so I may have jumped the gun with that comment.
I arrived here at 6.30am on Thursday, 29th March. I first had to go to reception at the Chateau Jasper to receive my keys and an "Introduction to Jasper" package (which I still haven't read). I was housed in Wapta House, which is a staff building behind the Lobstick Lodge (situated next to Chateau). I had an appointment with Human Resources at 10.00am so once I finally found my place, it didn't leave long to get some sleep. Like a zombie i headed up to HR to sign a heap of papers and receive my work uniform, which I needed for my 4.30pm shift that night. I met my housemates on my floor: Henrick and Pele from Sweden, Graham from England and our floor leader Gerry, who hails from Mexico. (There are actually a fair few Mexicans here. Not as many as there are Australians, but still quite a
few.)I learned that our place is the party place in terms of staff accomodation as there are no cameras here and everyone in the place seems ok with a bit of noise. The only downfall is that the place can be a bit of a pigsty but I guess that's guys for you. Unfortunately I got to work (I have been assigned to Amethyst Lodge) fairly late as I forgot to put my watch back another hour. I was leaving to get there early and the girls from HR saw me and asked me what I was doing. Obviously I had no idea what they were on about at first but I was lucky that the cute one offered me a ride. My manager was also okay and understood the mistake. She even offered me the night off as I had already had a long day and bugger all sleep on the bus. I was too excited to be working again and stayed my whole shift.
Jasper itself was very picturesque when i first got here. Even though it was dark when i arrived, I could still tell that the town is surrounded by mountains. In my first week
there was lots of snow around and I really loved the look of it. The snow had all but melted by the end of my second week and everything looks a bit dry as the grass is quite brown. However, it is nice to walk on dry ground. The mountains around Jasper look incredible. There is so much snow on them and they look even better when I'm wearing my glasses as I can make out the trees. There are lots of lakes around the town and the entire Jasper National Park. i can't wait to see them. Even the style of all the buldings in town seem so typical of a place where snow would be prominent. Especially when they had snow on top of them. As much as I still love the novelty of snow, Jasper is much more renowned as a summer destination and I'm told that there are so many beautiful places around the park to see.
Work is very, very quiet. It's very common, even normal, to have three tables or less from Sunday-Thursday nights. It's nice not to have too much pressure straight away but it does make it hard to learn and
practice. It is a very quiet time of the year but that is compounded by the Amethyst having a fire a few months and having to close most of the motel, which meant having to move a lot of group bookings to Marmot and Lobstick. I will predominantly be working dinner which is alright as I'm not a morning person but I would like to have a crack at breakfast as I imagine it would be busier (which means more tips). I'm just hoping we have an early summer this year!! Even though I've had nothing to do, I seem to have done enough to impress Kathryn, my restaurant manager. After working ther for about four or five shifts she told me that she is going to talk to the Food and Beverage Manager of MPL about making me her supervisor. From my understanding this is definitely going to happen. I'm pretty stoked as I don't think my job is going to change aside from running functions/banquets and getting more money. Not bad for a newbie!! Kathryn has spoken to me about working at other establishments to try and get more experience with functions. I am obviously going need to
know with role I am going to be in and we need at least one person from Amethyst to know what to do. From listening to Kathryn it also seems like I will be the main bartender in the restaurant when things start to pick up and we have more than one person working. The only downfall of my job (other than not having customers) is having to be clean shaven. I hadn't shaved for nearly a year and it felt so weird. I still don't like it but I have to do what I have to do!
At the moment Jasper has two main nights for the peple that live here, Sunday and Wednesday. Friday and Saturday are decent as well but there a lot of out-of-towners, which I'm more than happy with as Jasper is very small (I have already learnt this the hard way). In summer it's a party every night, apparently. As you can probably already guess, Jasper has a good party culture. This sucks for me as I'm such a fuddy-duddy who likes to stay in. I haven't made many friends of my own yet as I don't work with anyone and my house
is very small. So far I've just been following my housemates around and meeting people through them. I seem to enjoy hanging with the Mexicans a lot, when they aren't speaking in Spanish. They genarally don't around me but after a few drinks it obviously comes natural to them. I have already managed to make a dick of myself on a night out. I guess it's good to get it out of the way early. On Sunday I got a bit too drunk and lost my footing and landed face-first on a wooden pallet. It didn't hurt that much at the time, but i'm sure it will come payday, as I couldn't work for a week. I guess it's not very presentable having grazes from my upper lip to my forehead, which is understandable. I've managed to pick up a couple of cleaning shifts at work which will ease the pain a little. It's just a shame that I have to look like a lepper on my birthday!!
So that's the lo-down on Jasper for the meantime. Hopefully I will get out and see some the area around town and have something to write about soon.
'Til next
time!
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