Another hard day at the office

The rubbish photo that almost got me killed

My first pay

Tuesday was a glorious day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing in the trees and my first pay packet was sitting in a drawer, waiting to be collected. It turns out that I get paid a lot more money than I expected. I'm earning $18.15 an hour which is between almost eight quid an hour, more than I earned in any of my previous jobs. So everything work wise is going well. I'm learning quickly and I've watched tons of free dvds already. My favourites include Crash, The Constant Gardener and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Also watched Doom a couple of days ago which I thought was exactly the same (and as bad) as the Resident Evil films, although the first person shooter sequence was well cool.

What else have I been up to? Not much to tell the truth. I did walk up a hill a few days ago with the dual aims of taking a couple of photos of the city and getting some exercise. The hill I chose was only a five minute walk from where I stay but it turned out to be a lot steeper and slippier than I had originally assumed so the walk turned into more of a scramble. Eventually it became too steep to make it to the top so I had to take my photos balanced one-footed on a rock with one hand on the camera and the other clinging for dear life to another rock. It wasn't the safest picture I've ever taken and it turns out it wasn't the best of photos either. Not really worth risking my life over but I'll post it here anyway.

The other good news I have is that I just booked my transport and tickets so that I can make it to the Australian Grand Prix on April 2nd. I'm working on the Saturday night so I fly down to Melbourne first thing on the Sunday morning, go to the Grand Prix in the morning/afternoon/evening and get a coach home overnight. Can't wait.

Working 9 to 5 (or at least a step in the right direction)

Yes, it's finally happened. I have a job. I'll explain how it all came about.

It started in Melbourne. After Swag and Mac left I returned to my quest for employment. It had been an epic struggle of good versus evil up until then (or me asking people for a job and the bastards saying no) and the next few days brought no changes. Supplies (i.e. money) were running low (i.e. gone) and the future looked bleak...

...so i decided to head up to Adelaide to stay with my mum's friend Daisy for a while. She was incredibly kind and said that I could stay with her for a while and she'd help me find a job. She didn't waste any time and within one day of arriving I had an interview lined up at a video shop. The interview went well and I started on Monday. It's a decent enough place to work, plenty young folk and I get to hire dvds for free so I'll never be bored.

Apart from that I've been trying to get to know the city. It's much smaller than Melbourne or Sydney and although it's about the same size as Glasgow and Edinburgh combined it feels smaller than either of them. It's a nice place though and the weather's been ok but it's getting into Autumn now so I'm expecting the (semblance of a) tan to fade soon.

The Adelaide Fringe and Adelaide Festival are both on just now so there would be plenty to do if I had a bit more money. Last Tuesday I went to a hip-hop show which was part of the festival. It was called Breakin' Ground and featured Australia's top hip-hop DJ, a guy called STAEN 1 who's apparently ranked 4th in the world, and a local hip-hop cru (yeah, you read that right dawgs, I'm street) called Terra Firma who were pretty good. Stars of the show were a group of French break dancers called Wanted Posse. They were outstanding. Wasn't massively impressed with how they tried to use dance to tella story. one involving strange alien beings no less, but those frogs could spin on their backs, heads, elbows, knees or pinkies like nobody I've ever seen.

Anyway, better go now. It's 1.40 am.

Us outside the Kennedy house

Mac's tactical chunder

This was the point where Mac got off the bus to relieve himself of some excess liquids from the previous night. Probably best that his head's round the corner.

Me and Paul

Again, not the best of photos but it's the only one I have. I mentioned something about River City to Stefan Dennis. He found it very amusing. He seemed to be loving the night almost as much as we were. He seemed pretty hyper.

Me and Max

Max's Sideburns

Here's Max's sideburns. At the start of the night everybody got the chance to write questions which might be asked to the stars. One of the questions I wrote was to Max. I can't remember the exact wording but it was a sideburns related query. The quiestion never got asked but when I was speaking to him later on and I said I wanted a photo of his sideburns he asked me if it was me that wrote the question. Apparently he'd read the question backstage. He took it asthe joke it was meant to be and had a good laugh about it. Max was the person I was least excited about seeing when I went but the guy who plays him turned out to be a legend.

Me and Janae

Not the best picture of me. It looks as if I'm trying to have a conversation at the time this photo was taken.

Mac and Janae

Neighbours, everybody needs good Neighbours...

Swag and Mac arrived in Melbourne on Sunday. We went to the Meet Your Neighbour night at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow in St Kilda on Monday night and it was possibly the best night ever. The three stars there were Eliza Taylor-Cotter who plays Janae Timmons, Stephen Lovatt who plays Max Hoyland and Stephan "The Legend" Dennis who plays Paul Robinson.

By the end of the night we were in some nick but even at the start when we were relatively sober we were by far the loudest, rowdiest people there. Me and Swag outsang everybody else when we were all told that the stars weren't coming out until we'd sang the Neighbours theme.

One of the highlights of the night was when Craig volunteered for a competition, not knowing exactly what he was volunteering for and then found out he had to sing in front of the whole bar. He wasn't so enthusiastic when he found out what he had to do but he carried on and murdered Flower of Scotland to more than a few boos. I got a video of the whole thing on his camera. It's genius.

The night just had a fantastic atmosphere. Everybody was there to have a laugh and a good time. It didn't hurt that the girl to guy ratio was easily at least 10:1.

Anyway, we'd booked up to do the Neighbours Tour the next morning at 9am, not the best idea in hindsight. We only got a few hours sleep and turned up somewhere between hungover and half cut. Mac in particular was not feeling at his best and at one point got off the bus to have a tactical chunder. He told the bus driver he was travel sick but everybody else knew better.

We got to Ramsay Street, or Pin Oak Court as it is known in real life, and took a bit of a wander and more than a few photos. It's tiny in real life. It looks so much bigger on TV. After that, we drove past the studios where it's all filmed and had a quick stop at Blackburn English Language School the school used as Erinsborough High.

After that we got talking to another group of hungover Scottish people that had been at the Neighbours night the night before too. One of the girls was from Polmont. I'd actually been speaking to another of the girls the previous night when I saw her crying on the street. She'd lost her handbag and phone and couldn't find her friends. I'd let her use my phone to see if she could find her friends. She didn't remember much of this when I explained it to her the next day and was a bit devastated to hear it all. For all you who are wondering, yes, she found her bag.