help

turns out I was wrong about the job being maybe-ok: it's not. It's officially The Job From Hell. Oh man...those phone calls are so relentless.

My first day (yesterday) I didn't sell anything - maybe I'm getting the bad leads.

However, my body helpfully decided to get me out of there by developing a cold and throughout yesterday afternoon, my voice got croakier...and croakier...I was downing lemsip and pleading with my team leader to give me something to do other than phone people - "isn't there any filing to do, or anything? I really can't speak! it hurts!" - apparently there's not.

So today I woke up and I can barely speak. I'm going to go in to the office in a minute anyway, to show my face and let them know that I'm genuinely ill and not just hungover or something.

And then I guess I'd better spend the day hoarsely looking for a better job.

job update

Fingers crossed, touch wood etc, but I think my job may not be as bad as I expected. Just had 2 days of training and in a few minutes I need to head in for my first proper day of 11:45 - 8pm. In theory we're actually going to be on the phone selling today (oh my god - I really can't imagine that).

However, everyone else that's been training with me has been really nice, all travelling (except for one Australian...that's 1/14: I'm really not going to meet any Australians doing this). There's a "break-out area" (ah, brings back memories of the DH) but this one has FREE POOL, table football, tea and coffee! Score!! Plus we get discounted sandwiches. And free internet in the break out room (but that's just to make up for the fact that they're so mean, we don't have it at our desks, grr).

We're selling Accidental Death Insurance on behalf of Westpac, a bank.

The first day of training was a laugh and left me feeling really positive - then yesterday they started wheeling out the sales techniques which left me feeling more depressed: I just hate the whole concept of selling people stuff. But then, at least we're not trying to sell credit cards; I really might have too many moral qualms about that.

In other news, I have an interview on saturday for a waitressing/bar job, so I'll see how that goes and if they want to raise the salary to poach me from telesales (I feel that's a very likely possibility...not).

It's raining in Sydney.

New house!! + some Fiji photos

I moved into my new house yesterday and it's really nice...I'm so pleased, it's a great change from hostels and dorms. My housemates are really friendly, next door keep popping round and there's a party tonight at number 25 - it really feels like student accommodation, basically. We have sofas, we have a dvd player, it's great.

I'm living with an Irish guy, who's really nice - yesterday when I moved in he showed me to the supermarket (Aldi, yes - my bank account is happy), a Scottish girl who is my actual roommate, who seems really cool, a couple from Manchester and a guy from York. Mind you, most of them are going to be moving out over the next couple of weeks so then I'll have new housemates to deal with, but hopefully that will work out well.

We have a local called the Vic, which is great as it means I can pretend to be in Eastenders PLUS it's a welcome reminder of Vic, my much-missed ex-travelling companion. It's really nice, we had a drink there yesterday. Pubs in Sydney generally are nicer than back home: in London especially, they tend to be way too polarised between grubby, dark and full of old men versus posh, overpriced and full of people pretending they're in Sex and the City...whereas here you get a happy medium.

The other night I went out with some girls I met in Fiji. We'd originally planned to watch the Christmas tree lights get switched on in Martin's Place, but that plan fell through after they brought on some ridiculously crappy children's entertainer who started singing about pineapples...seriously...so we went to the pub. Many hours later, we actually ended up getting a tour of Kings Cross fire station at 1am...very, um, interesting.
Fiji

My birthday

Glengarry Glen Ross

I've been exceptionally busy over the last couple of days and now I have:
a job!! (don't get too excited...)
a house
a "Responsible Serving of Alcohol" certificate.

The house - I'm really excited about. I move in on friday, can't wait...it'll be so nice to settle in somewhere, leave my stuff in the bathroom, etc...it's through a company that organises houses for working backpackers, so it's kind of like uni halls in a way...they own a whole block of houses. There's 6 to a house and you share your room with one other (admittedly, a year ago I would have been like "God! I could never share a room with someone!", but now that seems like luxury compared to dorms). Hopefully my roomie will be nice. I haven't met her yet - all I know is she's called Claire. The house is in an area called Marrickville, which is right by Newtown where I am right now. I will be sending an email out with my new address in the hope of receiving some christmas post!

(OK, I admit, it was the first and only house I looked round. But hey, I needed a base, I was confused, and the woman who showed me round was all nice and motherly. And the kitchen in my hostel is disgusting, and the shower drips CONSTANTLY - I have to get out of there).

Then: the job! I'd just signed my life (well, only 4 weeks of it) away on the house and I did some halfhearted calling round of the agencies, which somehow resulted in me signing up for an assessment centre that afternoon with good old Kelly Services. I knew I didn't want the job: I told them that straight out, then just...allowed myself to be talked round. Oops. I turned up to the assessment centre and it was a total nightmare - role plays, all about selling stuff - you see, the job is, uh, selling insurance in an outgoing call centre. Yep, it's the nightmare...
well, the interview felt really hard, and I hate selling so I wasn't at all sure I was going to get the job. When they called me about an hour later and offered for me to start on monday, I just couldn't say no. It pays ok, the dress code is casual so I won't have to buy shoes and stuff, the hours are...weird (11:45am - 8pm, hmm) and it's a call centre full of other travellers so hopefully it'll be sociable. We'll see. It'll certainly do til something better comes along - and I mean, perhaps something better will come along, like, this week, before monday!

That was all yesterday...then today I headed to the city for my RSA course. The Australian government is incredibly tough on underage drinking and antisocial behaviour - or wants to be - and so anyone who works in a bar or restaurant has to do this responsible service of alcohol course. It's just one day and was actually kind of interesting - probably because I'm not Australian, and some of the laws are different over here. For instance, they're incredibly tough on giving alcohol to minors - it's illegal to give your own kids a glass of wine in your home, if they're under 18. And any venue that sells alcohol to be consumed on the premises HAS to provide food, as well - so all clubs and bars have to have a food menu. And it's illegal to service alcohol to "an intoxicated person" or even to have an intoxicated person in your pub!! So kind of ridiculous...you serve people so long as it doesn't visibly affect them!! It's like pretending that the purpose of going to a pub or club is NOT to get drunk. Hmm...

The course was full of travellers and some 18 year olds who've just finished school. We had a written test at the end of the day which you'll be pleased to know I passed...so hooray, I can apply for bar jobs now. Now if I can just find one that pays better than the call-centre-sales-job-from-hell...

Sydney

How does it feel
to be on your own
with no direction home
like a rolling stone...

Whoa, just arrived in Sydney and checked into a hostel in trendy Newtown.

Feeling pretty freaked out, overexcited and culture-shocked. Saying goodbye to Vic this morning was so weird and sad...I hope your 28 hour journey is going ok babe! Damn, you probably haven't even left Fiji yet!!

Australian customs were just as horrible as usual - seriously, they're really mean! This guy YELLED at me "What food do you have??" as I walked up to the "Goods to declare" aisle. (In this part of the world you have to declare EVERYTHING so the days of sailing through "nothing to declare" are gone). I was like "I don't have any food, as I clearly stated on my landing card if you'd bothered to read it." (well I didn't say that, I just thought it). These guys were doing a good cop/bad cop thing, as then the other one told the one who was questioning me to cool it - so weird! They made me unpack my whole bag to see various ridiculous items - I have this stupid seahorse skeleton that customs in most countries don't like very much and which I keep having to declare - I'm always forgetting to throw it away, and now I've declared it so many times it's started to feel like I've worked too hard to give it up now! I had to show them the soles of my trainers so they could check for mud. God.

Anyway, I arrived at my hostel in Newtown and it's very, very nice - ensuite room (though I have a top bunk, damn) big kitchen, lots of cool kids hanging out. I was sitting on my bunk feeling confused and lonely and trying to get some small talk going with one of my roommates, this French girl who had also just arrived, when she burst into tears - god, must be the only person feeling more insecure than me! I feel for her, her english is really not so good, to the point that I had to work really hard to get the gist of what she was saying...must make things veeeeery difficult.

I have so many decisions to make about jobs and flats and so on (I've got my bed in the hostel for a week, but it's $145/week so ideally I'll be able to find somewhere cheaper) and no idea where to start.

Birthday

I'm 23, weird! I also have a million + 1 mosquito bites on my feet, ouch. I don't know when they got me.

My birthday was cool in a weird way - it really doesn't feel like it's that time of year, and hence I feel a bit incredulous that it was my birthday at all. The day had a somewhat inauspicious start as we spent the night in a horrible dorm in this hostel - the aircon was broken, the fans were ineffectual, and it was so hot and humid...we both lay awake most of the night just sweating. Ew. We got up early and checked straight into a much more upmarket hostel right along the beach, and decided, as it was my birthday (and also as it was the only room they had left) that we would treat ourselves to a double room, ensuite, aircon, balcony, seaview...oh man it was so nice.

Vic bought me this necklace that I'd wanted from one of the islands...so cute as she managed to sneak off and get it without me noticing!

Having lounged around in our beautiful room for a bit, we decided to take the treat to the next level by getting our laundry done for us: having been on the islands for 14 days, and of course travelling for 3 months now, as you can imagine we had a lot of truly disgusting clothes...and the idea of having someone else take them away and deal and give them back to us DRY was just way too tempting. So, we packed off ALL of our stuff, and spent a few ours lounging about clad only in towels. All was fine until, at 4pm, the promised hour, we were presented with HALF of our laundry: the other half had mysteriously gone missing and we were told various stories about where it was..."it's being soaked", "no one but the laundry operator woman can operate the machine so we can't retrieve your clothes for you". This wasn't too bad for me, but a bit of a setback for Vic as ALL of her clothes were missing: she had to borrow stuff from me. It wasn't so much the immediate inconvenience, more the fact that we were concerned that our clothes had a)had a terrible accident, or b)been sold into slavery in Nadi market or something. It took until lunchtime today to get them back...big sigh of relief.

So anyway, despite our wardrobe choices being considerably restricted, we headed out and did some birthday celebrating...I called home, which felt the wrong way round, but I guess since I am in Fiji with no phone I have to accept that it's hard for people to show they care. We had dinner in our hotel with some girls who we'd met on one of the islands, hung out, drank some elaborate looking cocktails, then headed up to a different bar along the beach to meet up with some other people. This is when disaster #2 struck as Vic opened her wallet and realised that $50 was missing...and we just have NO idea where it can have got to. It's unlikely that it was stolen, but we also can't figure out when we would have lost it. This sucked, obviously, for financial reasons, but also from a practical perspective: there's no cash points around here, and that was the last of our cash. As a result, we're reduced to eating only in our hotel and charging it to our room! (yes, I know, dangerous...we're trying to keep track). It was also annoying in that it restricted the birthday night-out potential, as we couldn't get a taxi to the one pub/club place that Nadi has to offer. (This canadian guy said he'd take us there and we could pay him back in drinks, which we could pay for on a card. I would have accepted, but Vic stepped in as the voice of reason and stopped me...probably a good thing, though I'm sure he was a nice guy!) Instead, we stayed around the bars on our section of beach, and ended up drinking and playing cards with some drunken Irish guys and girls, the canadian (who is a pilot, how cool!) and a Fijian guy. Much fun.

Needless to say, today we checked straight out of our posh room and back into a dorm for our last night of travelling.

I can't believe I'm losing Vic, it's going to be so weird trying to make decisions on my own...but I've met loads of other people who are going to be in Sydney, and I'm feeling pretty positive right now. By which I mean incredibly excited, with an edge of hysteria. Woo!

the Yasawas

Back to civilisation!!!

We're just back from a wonderful couple of weeks on the Yasawa islands...they really were extremely remote and I felt so much further away from everyone than I have before, thanks to the lack of email, phone, TV or news of any kind. We were kind of scared that there would have been (yet) another insane natural disaster causing havoc by the time we got back, or possibly that bird-flu might have kicked off and countries started closing their borders...of course if that DID happen, the Yasawas would be the correct place to be. Now that I think of it, I haven't actually checked the BBC yet, better not speak too soon...we might need to hop straight back on a boat back to the middle of nowhere.

(OK, things look just as fucked-up as usual, so I think we're ok to stay).

The islands were fantastic. We stayed at 7 in total, plus we had a free night on this cruise-ship thing (not quite as posh as it sounds, but an interesting experience nevertheless) which made it pretty active in terms of moving around, which prevented things from getting boring (which admittedly, they did have the potential to, given that there was nothing on most of these islands except for tiny backpacker resorts and the occasional dive school). Days were spent snorkelling on wonderful, living breathing coral reefs teeming with fish [sic - is that how you spell "teem"?!], swimming in warm, clear, buoyant seas, sitting on beaches and playing volleyball - plus the occasional visit to a village or kayak trip. Accommodation was in bures - thatched hut-type things woven out of sticks - and was fairly basic: not just no hot running water...sometimes no fresh running water: it would be salt, which made showering off after getting out of the sea feel REALLY pointless. (We drank rain water). The islands had their own generators for electricity, which they'd turn on when it got dark. Sometimes dorms had lighting, though last night we went to bed with the aid of parafin lamps. Evening activity was necessarily limited...alot of time spent playing cards and alot of extremely early nights. (I think sleeping 8pm-8am is normal, now - plus a few naps throughout the day. Oh dear).

Most of the hostels were pretty empty, partly because of the remoteness and small-ness of the place, adn partly because it's getting to the off-season. (Lots of fabulously dramatic tropical storms). We'd usually be with 3 or 4 other tourists on an island, mostly backpackers, so things were very friendly. Plus the Fijians who work at hostels tend to be ridiculously friendly and also endowed with an incredible talent for remembering people's names. We met some very interesting people, including a couple of girls who were studying tourism at university in Suva(the capital city of Fiji) and doing a work placement on one of the islands. Six months working on an island with no phone or internet...and we thought we made sacrifices for our degrees!

On sunday we went to church on Nacula island, which was certainly...interesting, in an incredibly boring way. It was a methodist service, 2 hours long, and was just as boring as an english service except that it was conducted in Fijian, in a very very hot room. Luckily it seemed to be acceptable to lean your head on your arms and go to sleep - well, all the Fijians were doing it. More interestingly, afterwards we were abducted by crowds of little children, who each grabbed one of us by the arm and dragged us off to their houses for lunch - it's traditional, apparently. It was fascinating to eat in a proper Fijian household, but also extremely nerve-wracking...was I saying vinaka (thankyou) enough?? Could I eat the food? My heart stopped when I walked into the room to find the women of the household (men eat first) surrounded by plates of enormous, hairy-legged, spikey, lethal looking crabs. I love seafood, I was jus tterrified at the idea of having to tackle one of those beasts with nothing but my hands...the children all set to work, cracking the crab claws off and using them to lever the meat out of the shell, so I sat down ve-e-ry slowly, trying to appear calm and pleasant. After giving me a few minutes to panic, the mother presented me with a here's-one-I-made-earlier bowl of crabmeat in coconut milk...yummy.

Vic and I were both somewhat paranoid about eating in the village as Vic's friend Jess had done exactly the same thing in Fiji a few years ago and then came down with terrible dysentery afterwards. We drank plenty of water and went to bed early but, thankfully, were absolutely fine. Similarly last night's meal was some scarily bloody-looking chicken...and again, fine. Touch wood, times a million.

Anyway, we're now back in Nadi, waiting to fly our separate ways on saturday...and, of course, ready to celebrate my birthday tomorrow. 23 woohoo!! Thanks to everyone who's emailed recently, if I don't reply it's because I have only 6 mins internet time left. I'll get there eventually.