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Published: October 9th 2009
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Well, its been a while since I last wrote a blog but we've been rather busy! On the Monday of our second week in Sydney I went to work in a warehouse, lifting, sorting and unpacking boxes of clothes for an Australian mail order company while Amy sorted out various potential waitressing jobs for her and some clothes for said waitressing.
For the first few hours I really liked the warehouse job. It was nice to have something physical to do after years of getting fat at a desk but towards the end of the day I was utterly exhausted and my muscles were burning after 8 hours of carrying heavy boxes and my poor soft little banker hands were red raw. I was quietly relieved to have an interview at a call centre on Tuesday. After my interview the next day we moved into a flat that we had viewed the previous week in Surry Hills, a cool and alternative part of Central Sydney. The area is just a few minutes from Kings Cross, the famous red light district and quite a lot of the seediness has rubbed off, along with a touch of indie-cool. The flat itself is
really tiny, just a studio with a kitchenette and a bathroom but it looks relatively new (everything in Sydney does!) and everything works fairly well. Its also pretty cheap at $344 a week so we're very pleased with it. The interview at the call centre went better than I thought. The company is called 2evolve and they outsource for charities, calling past supporters and one off donators trying to get them back on board with monthly donations. I had reservations going into the interview that I was going to be guilt tripping people into joining all day but was pleasantly surprised when the day long group interview centred quite heavily on fundraising ethically. Later that day I was called to say that I had the job and would be starting on Wednesday with a training day.
The training day was nice and easy, all of the successful applicants from various group interview were taught how to structure the phone calls and what to say before we were all assigned a charity to call for based on our strengths and interests. I got ChildFund Australia which is an internation charity that sponsors children and their families in third world countries.
We met our respective team leaders for some further training on our particular charities before being sent home to digest all of the information ahead of our first real day calling. The next day I turned up for five hours of calling and it went fairly well. I can't quite remember now but I think I got a kid or two sponsored and generally really enjoyed it. Meanwhile, Amy had been interviewing with various waitressing agencies and had arranged to get her RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) qualification which is required for any hospitality job. However, when she learned that none of the jobs would be full time and might not provide her with enough money she took a role in a make up factory that promised to be full time for a couple of months. The job didn't sound like a lot of fun and poor Amy was stuck on her feet for eight hours a day screwing lids on filled jars of face powder and wiping any excess of the outside of a job and when she was told a couple of days into the job that they had no work left and she'd have to leave I
don't think she was too heartbroken. Through WTC she got a new job in a christmas decorations factory. Yes, making christmas decorations. The job still isn't exactly cerebral but its better than the make up factory and is long hours (which means good money!) so we're both well sorted with jobs now.
After work on that Friday we went to meet Amy's uncle Andy who lives in Sydney with his family in the famous suburb of Manly. We had a few beers with Andy before jumping on the ferry across the water and catching a cab to the house. It was quite late so we went straight to bed and woke up in the morning to meet the rest of the family, Kayte, Georgia and Charlie. We went for a drive around the northern beaches (including the one that Home and Away is filmed on!), plus a lookout point back towards Central Sydney, before staying in that evening for a lovely BBQ and a game of rugby on the tv. The next day we went for a walk along the beach before having a tasty brunch at a cafe and an early night before heading back to our flat
Monday morning on the ferry. It was lovely to meet everybody and I know that Amy was really pleased to catch up with family.
Other than that its been fairly quite over here. We're working out socks off so we can save up enough cash to see the rest of Australia and are generally conserving our money as much as possible. We've found a cheap dvd rental shop so most evenings are spent with instand noodles and a dvd in the flat - not that exciting but well worth it when we head off around the country with the money we've saved.
One bit of excitement that we have had was the huge dust storm that engulfed much of Australia a couple of weeks back. We woke up one morning to a deep crimson sky and visibility that extended little more than a street away. We initially panicked thinking that the end of the world was coming, or at least a big fire of something but then we turned on the news and found out that a big storm had picked up acres of dust from the outback town of Broken Hill (where we are headed in a
few weeks) and depositied it over Sydney, blanketing the city in a thick red dust. It caused quite a lot of havoc with the travel network as trains and planes were delayed, traffic snarled and people unable to walk very far because of allergy and breathing fears. It was quite exciting but did cause a lot of sneezing and managed to permeate our tiny flat, even with the windows closed.
Right, thats it on the updates for now, we've got an exciting weekend in the Hunter Valley to write about soon but I'll leave it for now because I've got to go to work and call some more people! Hope all is well back home with everybody.
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Diane
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iPho!
Lovin' the tee Lee! Genius. xx