alright.  so what have i been up to since i left queenstown.  Not a whole lot, been hanging out, kindof looking for work, but not really.  I had money then ran out.  I guess I need to find another job eh?  Well, since I ran out of money, I can't afford to go out into the world and make any, so what i've been doing is living at friends farms and WWOOFing, which is living and working there for free.  It's been good but i'm not making any money.... The month of October is going by almost as quick as september did, maybe quicker.  Currently i am waiting for a tax refund, and when that shows up, i'll get like 500 dollars and then it's time to party. oh yeah.  Well, then I can afford to pay for accomodation and food while I work another job, possibly tree planting.  I also want to go to the mainland, see some big cities, leave Tasmania.  

  I've got lots of time on my hands, figguratively speaking because i cannot literally hold time, but you know, i'm just like hanging out over here not doing too much.  I'm staying with Bronwyn at her beautiful mountain church, it's pretty great but part of me thinks about money and how I want to get some without working too hard.  For the past two weeks I've been working a few hours in the day, and wasting time on the internet at night; also reading alot, and writing some; I've been 'going to school' which is me learning from books and taking lots of notes- i've taught myself the fundamentals of Piano tuning, the complex and boring rules of english grammer (it's kindof interesting) and a linguistics course in progress, and i'm continuing on with my music studies with advanced harmony and complex counterpoint- this stuff is pretty cool despite all the abstract rules, and my inability to hear the music by playing it or really do any of the composition excercises.  I'm also thinking about my distant future, regarding the question of what im going to do with my life.  I still want to become a piano technician and tuner by going to school in september 2009, at UWO in london, which is apparently the best school in nort america for that type of thing.  After that I'm thinking about returning to montreal to study languages and probably more music, using the language stuff as leverage into a new and exciting carear in teaching english (or french) overseas, in china or japan, or somewhere else- middle east, vietnam,,, the list of cool places goes on.  I just need the skills to pay the bills.

  In other news, the world economy keeps getting worse- I wonder what that will mean. Loss of jobs? what jobs? Bankruptcy? I have no idea, and i don't want to follow it too much.  I read in time magazine about how London england, financial capitol of the world, is kindof in deep trouble.  But what does it mean?    From my understanding, a very simple understanding, is that banks are huge collections of wealth- people put their money in banks and the banks use the money- at any given time the bank is using alot more money than it actually has, and if all the people are like hey we want all of our money back, the bank is totally fucked.  Also the whole sub prime mortgage thing is crazy, with lots of idiots buying worthless crap, bank loans that the people can't pay back.  With all of these huge collections of wealth crumbling, will the world crumble with it?  Will the price of broccoli go up, double, or become too expensive for me to afford?  Part of me thinks that maybe it's a good thing, like how could the world keep up with the growth, the exponential growth couldn't go on so maybe it's a good thing. Maybe this will eliminate the whole idea of super super rich people and the wealth will be more evenly spread out. Maybe not.  I don't know.  In the end most things are forgotten. Life is short while art is long. I'm going to keep on doing what i'm doing I guess.

 Yesterday I climbed a mountain- it was the most intense mountain climb of my life.  I got soooo high man, it was like, amazing.

HI, what is up? what's going on with paul? not much... lots, and lots of... stuff, and stuff.
when i last wrote i think i had just escaped from queenstown. good news.
but there was some bad news in the computing department- i lost all the data from my 2GB MP3 USB device. I'm hoping that i can recover the data, but im not betting on it because i've already tried so many times using a bunch of different recovery programs. it's terrible, i lost so much stuff. Oh well. It's weird but kindof cool to be computing from 2 USB keys, which are also little mp3 players, radios, and voice recorders, with a combined space of less than 3 gigz. but it just sucks when 2 / 3rds of my stuff is deleted for some mysterious reason. It happened when i put a new AAA battery in it. So sad. Plus i had been collecting a collection of hilarious internet images- it makes me want to stop collecting images from the internet, but im sure i'll start again soon. I am waiting on the recovery program to do it's thing- but it just sucks because this one im trying now takes a half hour to work it's magic. I already tried doing it one way, which took a half hour, and it didn't work, but there's another option that i tried, which takes another half hour, and that sucks because im paying 8 $ for 2 hours of computing time when I can't really afford it but i need to know that my data is safe. Remaining time is 11 minutes. Come on, work!
I'm also downloading a couple of albums: TV on the radio, which i hear is good, and the weezer red album, which i hear is crap. the album is coming in at 175 kb a second, not bad, not bad.
I did my taxes today too, over the computer, and i hope to get 500 dollars really soon. I really really need that. It's great because than i might not have to get a tree planting job. sweet. But i should have called them today.... oh well. too busy. whoa now it's up to 255 kbps, fast. but the data recovery thing is going so slow , i might not have time to finish it in the 8 minutes, or 7 minutes till the internet cafe closes. shitty.
man, times are tense. it's going to be close ahh!

so i left queenstown, i was there for two weeks.
i might as well write about it. I was there for over two weeks; it's a small town in the mountains. Used to be a large area for mining, but not so much anymore. It's a nice area, rolling green hills, semi-tropical trees, and the drive from hobart was amazing- beautiful hills. So many different types of landscapes.
The reason I was in queenstown was because i saw an ad on a board in hobart, at the backpackers there, about a job at a pizza shop and bakery looking for a shop assistant and a construction worker, and i said i could do both. The boss, Harold, gave me the job after talking to him for 10 minutes on the phone, and he seemed like a nice guy. I showed up as agreed, after driving around for a couple days with these two girls from the south of england- they were nice, and they said 'brilliant' alot.
When i show up, the boss isn't around- he went to the mainland for a few days, and i ended up working for a week and a half before ever meeting him in person. The building i was staying in was a big two story thing on a corner of the main street; it used to be a hotel, but it was more of a construction site- it's going to open as a backpackers/ hotel in the future. The pizza shop bakery was on the ground floor. It was a sweet job at first, the days flew by. I spent a few hours in the morning being trained by a dutch girl named susan- she was nice and showed me how to back some things, as well as what to do during the morning shift in the bakery.
The big seller was pies- we had many types of pies, full of different types of meats, about 15 styles. Plain mince, chunky steak, beef and stout, beef and mushroom, beef and tomato, chicken and cheese, curry chicken, thai curry chikcen, egg and bacon, beef bacon and cheese, and other ones too, and sausage rolls and 'savory' rolls, and a 'cornish' pastry called a 'pasty', and i made coffees, and put bread in the oven and took it out and sold it, i woked the cash regester, i snacked on things, i made and snacked on baked goods,,,, and then in the evening i helped out Steve, the canadian, with the pizza shift. Steve is a cool guy, he showed me alot about how to work in a pizza place. I ended up making some good pizzas, i was eating a small pizza every day, it was delish. can't go wrong with a simple pizza. I was also eating alot of the pies we didn't sell, and that was good- normally i try to be a vegetarian, but i ended up gaining alot of weight from pies and stuff,,, not that i can ever be FAT fat, but it was interesting to feel my arms and bodycore get a little bit thicker. In the end i worked 13 days straight. I worked a 14th day, but i ended up leaving without getting paid for it- i just up and left becase it wasn't working out.
Before i met the boss i had heard alot about him. He's dating a girl who's 25 years or so younger than him, so that's kindof scandalous in a small town. He also stabbed a guy not long before- there are lots of different stories about it, some saying harold acted in self defence after someone broke a window of his shop, some saying he stabbed first Then broke the window himself, who knows. There was also alot of writing on the walls everywhere- i guess because its a construction site it's ok to write any messages anywhere, but the types of messages: IF THIS DOOR IS OPEN AND THE HEAT IS ON, PLEASE SHUT IT (YOU BASTARDS!), PLEASE GOT HELP ME KEEP THIS DOOR SHUT, plus various other things i can't remember, and jokes on the washroom walls, and stolen(?) roadsigns everywhere. I also found out that the pay was 10$ an hour, which is kindof a low amount considering most jobs will pay 15 an hour, and while this includes the room, it is still not a good deal if im working alot of hours, which i was.
When i first met the boss, he seemed nice. On that day , there was a large group of 19 students plus a few teachers, who were part of a bus tour and needed lunches because someone forgot to pack them. It was crazy having that many people come in! I had just made cookies and muffins, and the pie oven was stocked- i ended up selling out of everything, and i had to re-stock the pie oven. At this time i was told that i needed to slice up salami, or, kabana to be precise. So i threw the pies in the oven, but i relized that i forgot to make the egg spread- it's a bowl of whipped eggs that i paint onto the tops of the pies with a brush to give them a golden color and some extra flavor. Anyways, this time i forgot to put it on, opened up the oven door to paint it on then closed it again. I went back to work without setting the oven timer, which is a small computer thing that navigates through all the different things i can bake. Without the oven timer, i didn't notice how i burnt about 15 pies; eventually steve came down to fetch a pie for the boss, and he was upset that i had burnt them. I ended up hearing from his girlfriend bonnie, who called me up and told me i'd have to pay for the pies, and she also wanted a list of the pies that were ruined, which was annoying. Anyways, he was upset with me and didn't say much to me about it, but i heard about it later. I worked a 9.5 hour day for him which was fine, did some tiling of a bathroom with him. He was alright , but the more i got to know him, the more he just seemed like a really negative guy, who drank too much and would yell at me for silly reasons, and for the pay i felt he was underpaying me, and when i did give him my hours he seemed really upset that i had worked as much as i had- in fact steve had been the one in charge of telling me when to work, but i was later told that i was only supposed to work 3 hours a day and why the fuck was i working six? I was told i had to take it up with steve, and i had about 10 hours he said he wasn't paying me for. steve ended up giving me 50$ to make up for it, but he's 10,000 in debt and i felt bad having him pay me when the boss should be- and more than 10$ an hour at that. I mean, usually accomodation is 120 a week or 150 max. if i was getting paid 15 an hour, i would have rent paid and then some, becuase i was working Every day, over 40 hours a week. over 50 !
Anyways, it's the slow season, and the bakery wasn't making that much money, not many customers, and i felt that the boss was feeling stressed about it. But he seemed to really hate the town too. I asked him how long he'd been there for and he told me 'too fuckin long'. He told me his theories about how all the towns people were similar to cavemen when they go to the pub. I did laugh at one thing, he was talking about a sexy young 15 year old girl, who apparently is very attractive for her age but gets with alot of guys, and he said she had hillbilly parents, and he said 'her mother looks like a fuckin COUCH! and her father looks like a BROOM! i dunno, had to be there, but it was hilarious the way he said it. But yeah, kindof a negative guy, said the word cunt alot. He was made me just up and leave- after he paid me about 700$, i figgured i should get back to civilization. It's good to be back!
I'm now in launceston, i havn't checked my email in a long time, and when i finally did i got a bunch of worried emails from my mom- i guess i should reply to her emails or call her!
i should get going, im late!

ah yes, it's an update. much has happened.

since i last wrote, i left off writing about how i was w.w.o.o.f. ing for a lady who temporarily lost her memory. I ened up staying with her for another night and was told that the doctor said it is quite common for people aged 50 and up to temporarily loose their memory for anywhere up to 8 hours. Weird eh? I also recently read that the famous author Agutha Cristie went on a bender where she didn't remember anything for a period of weeks and she was lost (actually staying in some country in, but it's said that she was in hiding because her latest novel wasn't good or something...)
Anyways, i last wrote from the beautiful mount roland. Since then i';ve done and seen much. what? i'll tell you!
When i left the mountain, I went to Launceston, where I hung out with the various people i knew in the area, played some music at on the backpackers piano and also at the 'Reggae Lounge'. The lounge is under construction, and getting better every time i stop by. Lots of music and joints were played and smoked. I stopped looking for grass a while ago, so i rarely find it, but it's nice when it finds me. It was cool to play with the dudes i met a few months ago when i first showed up in town, and another friend I met in Devenport, justin, came along and impresed everone with his guitar improv- he;s excellent and plays well with the other guys. I am ok with coming up with stuff on the spot, musically, but im sure i could be alot better- it's nice to be classically trained and everything, but that's different from being able to jam well with others.
Another thing i did was some good old protesting. A huge company wants to build a billion dollar pulp mill up in this place called Beauty Point, and alot of people don't want it to be built, for alot of reasons- One thing, it will ruin the beauty of beauty point, pollute the river, result in many trees cut down, and put the smaller pulp mills out of business. Fuck that bullshit. So about 5,000 people came together in the park, and then marched around waving signs and yelling. Good times.
So i was there for two nights, in launy, then drove with a french girl to Hobart, capital of Tasmania. we checked into the Central city backpackers, and I got my own room for 120$ a week, not bad. My reason for traveling was to start treeplanting a few days later. I soon learned that the start time was 5.30am, and i needed to be in New Norfolk, a small down about 20 minutes away. So after a few days of hanging out in the hobart, I get up really early and try and get to the Bush Inn for 5.30 am one morning. I was told it was on the main street, so after a long time of driving on the main street I ask some guy where i can find the place, and he tells me where to go and i go there, only to find noone there- they didn't wait for me. I got there 8 or 10 minutes late and they're gone. I've worked for these guys before, and lost my job for being late- so i didn't even bother trying after that first miss because i knew I botched it. And who wants to get up at 4:30 in the morning anyway?? Not I sir, I am lazy. Anyways, shortly after, I saw an add on the message board about a job in queenstown- so i called the guy and got the job after talking to him for 10 minutes. He seemed nice.
After that, i spent a week in hobart, hanging out. Here are the highlights. There was a guy that said I could call him for casual work, so i called him several times a day for a week because i really wanted to work for him but he never answered. There were some cool people at the backpackers, and usually when they were going out they would ask if i wanted to come, and because I wasn't spending any money on drinks for myself, they would buy some drinks for me- how nice of them. Props to Jean, Tom, and the german guy. There was also a large TV, so i was introduced to a few amusing DVDs. One day I went for a drive and found my way onto an amazing side road through hills it was beautiful. An annoying thing about hobart is the parking tickets and speeding violations i collected; 2x25 and 35$ for parking in the wrong place (but it's where the people who ran the backpackers told me to park!!), 80$ for parking and letting my car roll a bit forward,where it stopped against the curb (without hitting anything thank the lord) but it crossed a yellow line, and later I got an email from Joan (she gets my mail) telling me i had a 110$ speeding ticket for driving 87 km per hour over the hobart bridge, which is 70 kmph. So yeah i have about, what, 250$ of fines now, which i am working to pay off.
Usually I'f im bored at night i'll go hang out in the mall- which is a street full of stores for pedestrian use only, with benches and funky architecture. If it's a weekend, all i need to do is sit down for a while, usually while working on a perspective drawing, and someone will come up to me and talk to me and maybe take me with them to whatever fun they're going to. Most major cities in tasmania have these streets, and i've met some cool people this way. One night I was hanging out there, and there was a drunk guy and his girlfriend yelling at each other in very very very loud voices, so i looked over to see what was going on and the guy asks 'what the fuck're you lookin at?' and gives me a punch in my face that hurt for days- that was really annoying because 1. who does that? 2. I don't carry a knife or brass knuckles because guys like that need to get hurt; not that i would hurt anyone, but for a long time after the incident i was still really mad at what happened and wished i could have fought back.
Another time i met this friendly dude with dread locks. He was a happy guy who took me to a few bars and introcuded me to his friends, who were also cool and bought me drinks, a big group of people who I later learned were all on some type of speed/MDMA. They were friendly enough, and there were pretty girls talking to me. At one point we take a cab back to their appartment, a very cool house, for the purpose of inhaling nitrus oxide. I did not participate in the N20 or whatever the chemical number is, but they did give me speed which I took a small amount of. It was crazy being on it, I was talking pretty fast even though I took a small bit... I thought the nitrus was interesting- they had this device which brings it down to zero degrees kelvin, which is actually -270 degrees- the whole point is to have zero movement of the atoms. Anyways, we went to a club which was fun, talked to some people, almost got puked on, then later went back to the appartment where the dudes did more and more nitrus oxide. It was crazy how much they did- it comes in packages of 8 little metal containers, in boxes with little pictures of ballons on them, because i guess they're bought from a party supply store. I passed and im glad I did. At some point i look over, and one dude is shaking his friend asking him if he's ok, and the guy looks passed out and twitching, then stopped moving and i thought he died, but he came out of it after a minute. But yeah it was an alright place, and like i said, it's nice when grass finds me, even though i'm not one to seek it out. They were definitly drug dealers- I was kindof impressed by being told, by the guy who i first met in the mall, that he was deling weed when he was 18, making more money than his mom who worked a full time job, all because you buy a pound of grass at 200 an ounce and you sell them for 280, and you make your 80$ just buy going over to a friends house, dealing the drugs or whatever, smoking a spliff with them, and making a cool 80$. Do that 2 or three times a day, and it's easy money. But yeah, im glad i don't have access to the pot anymore, for alot of reasons. Maybe i'll stop by my friends place next time im in hobart- they were nice guys.
I'm now in Queenstown- i've got much to write about still but i'm out of time in the library, so i'll continue again later,
PEACE OUT, LOVE PUAL

when i last wrote i was staying in the backpackers in Devenport. It was a sweet deal because i was getting free accomodation in exchange for cleaning the rooms and kitchen everyday. It was great, but i wasn't actually making any money; so when i was told that there was several months of work available near launceston, i went for it.
This job was in a small town called Perth, close to launy, and not to be confused with the much larter Perth- capitol of Western Australia. I moved into the farm of friends Evan and Jen, and everything seemed great... except that after my 1st day of work, they told me; thanks for coming in today but we don't need you to come in tomorrow... actually we're not sure when there will be more work because this job depends on how many orders there are and unfortunetly there aren't any orders right now sorry, we'll call you if we hear of anything. HOW MUCH DOES THAT SUCK? so much. i left the place with free rent because they told me i could work for several months, and then after the first day they told me that's all there is. Now that i'm thinking about it, i wish i had told the lady what i was really thinking- i would have told her she's a jerk for doing that. GRR...
anyways, so i stay at the farm for a week, hanging out, reading alot, but i realize i should move on because im not making any money and i couldn't afford the rent. I had the oppourtunity to do some W.W.O.O.F.ing, which stands for Willing Worker On Organic Farm.
I was staying with a lady named bronwyn at her house (it wasn't actually an organic farm) at the base of mount roland, a beautiful place. I stayed there for over a week. I helped out with a number of things she was working on, and with various other chores including putting together a package for the Sheffield councilors in regards to some social work she wants to do, computer help, and carrying firewood. I also helped her return 2 televison sets to K-mart.
At one point i climbed the mountain. I was told there was a path to the top, but it wasn't advertised in the tourist information agencies becuase it was rough and 'scaley', which i guess means the path is crumbling and steep. I leave at 2.30 in the afternoon, and climb the mountain, climbing all day, racing to the top to see the sunset- i was taking alot of photos, so i really ran for the top, but i just missed the sunset, and as i finally made it to the summit, it was beginning to get dark. Oh well, thought paul, I guess i'll have to climb down the mountian in the dark, no big deal, it's a full moon anyways. It actually was a big deal, I couldn't see much at all. I waited around for a while untill the moon was above me, and then slowly made my way down the path.
The path was easy to follow during the day because of these pieces of orange tape that were attached to trees along the way. Unfortunetly for me, i couldn't see them at night and i stumbled off the path almost immediatly. It was quite dangerous, and at one point i was climbing down a large rock, and i guess i didn't realize that it was really steep untill i was sliding down it way too fast- i saw that when the rock came to an end there was a cliff and a dropoff with darkness and more rocks below. I pretty much knew that if i fell of the cliff i was dead, so i grabbed the sides of the rock i was sliding down to save myself, and i did save myself, which is great, but i ended up breaking my thumbnail in the process. I didn't notice it for a minute because i was so pumped up from nearly dying, then i saw all the blood and felt the fingernail flopping around. it was really awkward because it was too painful to rip off the huge hangnail, so i ended up climbing down the rest of the way, it was intense and scary, took me hours. I remember one moment, walking through the dark, i was confused about where i was standing and realized i was in a big rotten tree. There were lots of huge felled trees, and large rocks, and other dangers, but finally i found a stream of water flowing down, which i followed, and eventually found my way to a type of road that had perhaps been cleared by a bulldozer or something, and i stumbled my way down for a while untill i heard a voice calling my name; it was bronwyn- somehow she knew where i would end up and was waiting for me! it was amazing. I probly met up with her at 11pm, exhausted after my adventure, and very glad she was there waiting. It was quite an awsome adventure, or, spirit quest as i like to call it.
Bronwyn was putting together a type of resume, which summarized her lifes work and stated her objectives involving a tourist center, kindof a pioneer village type thing, and also another thing that would help youth who are having problems in school. This involved putting together a large package full of awards she's won, letters of reccomendation (there were lots of these, including one from the prime minester), and various other information she wanted to include. This took a long time because she needed 6 copies of it, and i put them all in books with clear plastic pages- it was quite alot of work. There was also lots of oppourtunity for me to use my technical support skills- i spent hours trying to fix a problem with the printer, and i finally got it going by turning it off and on again.
It was great because Bronwyn had a camera, so i was able to take a few shots of the area. The landscape is really beautiful around mt. Roland, and i ended up taking 450 pictures while i was there. Lots of boring scenery, especially from high up while climbing, and i also took alot of shots of these cute little animals called Paddymelons, which are small shy marsupials and i would feed them small apple cubes. I went out alot to take photos- sometimes climbing the mountains or just driving around. There are lots of mountains in the area, and i climbed a few different places.
One thing happened that was weird: I came home after a long day of climbing around. It was steep at times, and i had been walking for hours, so i was pretty tired when I got back to the house. I go into the kitchen and i see bronwyn- she hadn't been feeling well for at the time, and had spent the past two days in bed. Bronwyn comes into the kitchen and starts picking things up, asking -" what's this doing here? Who put this here? What's going on here? Something's not right... something's not right..." I noticed something was strange, she was confused why there were flowers and some parsley in water on the windowsill. I started asking her questions: Don't you remember going shopping? You bought the parsley when we went into town on monday, remember? do you remember going to Devenport and returning two television sets? .... she didn't remember any of it, she was asking me what day it was, and she was asking me what happened to her television sets. It was so weird, because the Bronwyn i know is really smart, and now she didn't even remember what happend 2 days before. In fact, she was quite suspicious of me for a little while; I could almost tell by her face that she didn't belive me that we had gone into town to return to the television sets, and that perhaps she suspected me of stealing them. It was kindof scary, because i knew she had lost her memory. I asked her lots of questions, she wasn't too sure of much. She was asking me alot of questions too, but really she was just repeating the same 3 questions, which i would answer and then she would ask me again almost immediatly after: why am i still in my pajamas? What time did you leave this afternoon? What happened to the TVs? Why am i still in my pajamas?.... I realized that i had to call someone, so i looked in her cell phone and called about 10 numbers but noone was answering, or helpful. I knew i could call her son Ross, but she didn't have the number written down anywhere and she couldn't remember it- i guess it's a number she always remembers... she didn't even remember my name, or my mothers name and my mom's a good friend of hers. Finally i called the directory assistance number, and once she was talking to her son she seemed to slowly get better, which was a relif. I ended up hearing about 10 different expressions for 'going crazy', some of which i've never heard before. she said: I must be losing my marbles! I've gone round the bend! I'm off me rocker! (she said that one alot), and i can't remember all the other ones. But yeah, i was so glad she found her way back to reality... maybe it was caused by her fever, or sickness or whatever it was. im not sure... but later that night she made me dinner, and she asked me alot of questions about what happened. The next day we talked still more about what went on while she was in her state of forgetfullness; she didn't remember anything of what happened, it was so weird. She said nothing like that had ever happened to her before.


I guess alot of things have happened since then but i'll write about that stuff later. i can only type so much....

so it's been a while since i've written. It's been even longer since i last worked.
A few days ago i got a call really early in the morning telling me about a job interview the next day and it looked really good and she said she would call me. When she didn't call I called her, only to find that my interview was canceled, which is a shame cause it would have been a great job- working in a nursury, dealing with trees, little baby trees. Maybe she will call me, but with my experience in job searching over here i have learned that when they say they will call you back they will NOT call you back.
There was one funny story that i wanted to write down before I forget. It was doing the broccoli planting. I hope i didn't write it down in here already... It was a conversation we were having at lunch. Here are the characters in this diologue. It should be said that it is really difficult to judge the age of the tasmanians. They always appear alot older than they actually are, perhaps because im used to people who don't spend as much time in the sun, and also because the sun is much stronger down here. But anyways, back to my cast of characters:
A: The boss lady,
B: Another lady, im guessing 30ish,
C: A younger guy, perhaps 27 or something?
ME: the guy writing this, a Canadian, while all other characters are local tasmanians.

This is a really real conversation. It may not be 100% accurate but im trying to type it like how it was.
Here is the scenario: Boss lady cuts herself.

A: yeah, i just cut meself, it's bleedin' pretty bad, but i've worked with me finger broken before and that was worse than this. Havin' a broken finga is much worse then workin' with a cut finga.
C: I've broken nearly every one of me fingers!
B: I've broken this finger, look at that, it doesn't even bend anymore, and it's got this bump now, look at that!
A: I've got the same thing here on this one, me pointer finga.
C: Fingers are nothin'. I've broken me arm twice, and me leg and a couple ribs in a bikin' accident.
B: I've broken so many bones! (she lists the bones she has broken)
A: yeah i was pretty rough with me brotha, back when we was kids. Surprized we didn't kill each otha! When'e was three i'd put in a tire and roll it down the hill this steep.  (shows an angle with her arm, about 45 degrees) 
ME: whoa...
B: Me brotha got stabbed 23 times and survived. that was a hellofa night for him, it was.
C: That's nothin' i've been stabbed 3 times! once in me side when i was pregnant, and once in me head!
ME: That's pretty crazy, was your baby alright?
C: Yeah, he's alright. I fackin' hated the bastard that did it. The cunt died a few years ago, fackin' drowned when he was pissed, and boy was i glad!

There was more to that conversation, but yeah, i think i got the jist of it down in that diologue. I was wondering how she could survive getting stabbed IN THE HEAD. The moral of the story is: Tasmanians are tough. Through and through. It's true that not all tasmanians are like the ones i've just described but alot of them are, the ones who grew up in the small towns and on the farms.
I don't really have much time to write today. I've spent alot of time looking up hilarious photos of people, or , to be more specific, photos of people with hilarious people in the background.. For anyone curious, my photo site is below, and i'll upload all the hilarious results of my image searching:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/_psm/sets/

What's up The Internet, it's your humble servant paul here, writing another update.

What have i been up to? many things, yes, many things.
I've been working some, but not enough because it's been raining. I'm working farming jobs, so not working in heavy rain is a good thing, but still,,, i need the money!
It's cold here, because it's winter. But I can handle it better than the locals, who complain so much even though it isn't even below zero. At work there was a lady who was wearing a black hat, in canada would be called a touk or something, and it said 'KIN FREEZIN on it, which i thought was funny. It was more funny because it wasn't actually freezing. I know it does snow up in the mountains, and i plan to go up to a place called Cradle Mountain sometime soon as i hear it's a world heritage site because of it's good looking scenery. There's also another mountian i'm going to climb called mount Roland. Oh and another thing i want to do, is called W.W.O.O.F ing, which is being a Willing Worker on an Organic Farm, getting to stay someplace beautiful for free and getting free food in exchange for a few hours work; but for that i'd need to save up some money because they don't pay you for the work you do.
But i'll write a bit more on the work i've been doing. With the farm work, im usually making about 18$ an hour. Which is sweet, and more sweet right now , is my setup at the backpackers residence where i clean the kitchen at night, and two nights of that is one night of free rent. And 1 week of rent is 113$, so let me calculate how much it costs for me to stay there.... about 10$ a night, which isn't bad because i have my own room, and it's a hosptal room because the place is an old hospital they rennovated.
Have i written all i can about broccoli? yeah it's kindof backbreaking, because all it is is bending over and cutting out the broccoli with a paint scraper, then throwing it in a bin carried by the tractor. The tractor can carry 10 of these huge bins at a time, and im sure a better basketball player now that i've thrown so many collys into faraway bins; not without missing the bin, and once they hit the ground they're dirty and no good. We were working in this rich red soil, and one day it was raining and we got it all over our boots and shoes; i didn't notice that i had it on my shoes, and as soon as we got dropped of at our hospital house I quickly went straight to my room so i could get to the laundry before anyone else, but little did know I had tracked mud all the way from the front door, down two long hallways to my room. The manager was really upset and he yelled at me, using kindof funny language like 'HELLS BELLS' and, 'i've had it up to my eyebrows with this mud!' and so fourth,, but while he's yelling at me, at least 3 other people tack even more mud into the place, but noone admits to doing it and everyone blames me because i was the one caught. Eventually i got a little help from one other guy, but i later found out it was two ladies who did it too but they didn't own up because of how mad the manager was. One girl was this german girl, who tracked it all up the stairs and then blamed me , even though i never went upstairs, betch. Perhaps i will go on a digression just to talk about how annoying she was....
. ...ok my first impression of this girl, she's telling a story of how she 'pissed herself laughing' at a girl who fell on her face, and just the way she told it i was like wow that's kindof harsh. Then later, almost at the end of the day, she starts cutting into my row of collys, perhaps because she notices that im about to be run over by the tractor while trying to be a hero cutting out every last one without missing anything,, and i notice her helping me, and i say Thanks, and then she goes, ' JUST KEEP MOVING' in her thick german accent. And a few days later she calls me an idiot because i think the bag around the bin is tied tight enough and she doesn't agree. And she was rude to everyone! and alot of people i worked with would talk about it behind her back; we all thought it was weird how she could be that mean and bossy even though she was the youngest person on the team. damn, she was evil. but anyways... im glad collys is pretty much over.
The farming season this year, i hear, is kindof a strange one. Like, the crop is 5 times what it usually is. Maybe more, because i heard they usually get 800 bins, and this year they got like 4500. Im not sure if this is the result of climate chage, but it seems to benefit the collyflower farmer in tasmania....
After a few days off, i decided to call up some number i got from a friend about a job, and they agree to pick me up the next day. It's picking a vegetable they call Sweeds, which is actually a turnip in canada (or as the tasmanians often call it, CANADIA). Turnip picking was a brutal job, but it was kindof fun, for the one day that i worked it. It isn't paid by the hour, but they give you 55$ per half ton bin. A half ton is a huge amount of Sweeds, but i hear some people can do 3, 4, or 5 bins a day. They give you a sharp knife, which they deduct from your pay, and some smaller buckets to fill up before dumping them in the bin. I only finished 1 bin that day, but i guess my strategy wasn't very good, and maybe if i gave it a chance i could have been getting 3 bins in a day, but i couldn't do it because i felt it was too rough on my wrists. I wasn't going about the job right because most people were filling their buckets till they overflowed and get someone to help them carry them over to the bins, while i would fill them half way and carry myself. I might have noticed if i was working next to the locals who have been doing this job for years, but instead, i chose a part of the 'paddock' (aka field) where i could pick along the fence next to a field full of cows. Perhaps if i had not been next to the cows i would not have been so distracted and i could have worked more and made more money, but, i was so amused by being next to the cows that i spent alot of my time paying attention to them and not working. At first the cows walked over, and were just kindof checking me out, staring at me. Like 20 or 40 cows! Sometimes some of them would get bored and leave , but usually there were alot of cows just 2 meters away from me! so close i could smell their stink. I thought it was cool, that they were so interested in me, and perhaps they enjoyed my whistling or beat boxing. Later i found out they were more interested in the sweeds, and when i got a small one i would toss it over and they would all fight over who got to eat it. Yes it was an amusing day next to the cows. After a day of not working hard and not making much money, i decided it wasn't worth my sore wrists and back, so that's that. No more sweeds.
Broccoli planting. This past week I didn't have work, and so i fell into a schedual of going to bed very late, staying up reading. I'll write about the books i've been reading next. But yeah, i go to bed on thursday at 4am after finishing 2 books, and i was nice and comfortably sleeping at 7 when i get a call asking me to come into work because they really need somebody. Now, usually i know ahead of time if im going to work so that i know to go to bed early, but yeah even though i was extremly tired i still went to work that day and did some broccoli work. Basically, i just walked behind this tractor that 3 people were sitting on feeding little plants into the planter, and my job was to make sure there were no gaps and that all the little plants were covered with soil properly because if they aren't they would die overnight. It was an easy job, walking around kicking dirt on plants that weren't covered right. No problem, and maybe there's lots more where that came from.
One thing that is getting annoying, is gettting my stuff stolen. I had a huge load of my laundry stolen off the line, including all my warm clothes. But now that i've been in devenport, it's my food that i need to be careful with. There seems to be a food theif staying with us, and with only about 12 people staying there, i have my suspects. It seems that everyone is getting food stolen from them, although some people could be just saying that so they would not be suspected themselves. There is this one guy that says up really late into the night, and maybe i suspect him because he wears a black leather jacket. He's a cool guy, nice to me, and he often says 'Dead Set!' which i think is funny, but im not sure about him. He says that he lost his sugar, but im like, why would someone steal only your sugar and not your milk bread and other stuff that other people seem to be complaining about. A few nights ago, the film The Fugitive, with harrison ford, was on tv, and that made me think how leather jacket dude (i forget his name) is in fact a fugitive himself, hiding out in tasmania, avoiding the law, no money and stealing food... but im not sure. Not yet. Anyways, it's really really annoying to have someone stealing your food. SO ANNOYING. I made this really good stuff with Tempeh (soybeans) and curry, making enough so i could eat it for a few days, and the next morning i find it's gone! GRRR. oh well, no use crying over stolen food...
It's now saturday, i've been at the internet cafe for a while. I bought a new 2GB USB MP3 player and i've downloaded some music and interesting lectures. I'm kindof tired of typing so i'll say goodbye for now, untill next time

This post was written over a week or so, saved as a draft in my email because i didn't get too much time on the internet to write all i wanted to write.

So i'm now in davenport. much has happened and i've not got much time to write.

The reason i left Launceston was because i couldn't find a job, despite much searching and applying. Many places said they'd call me back, including various jobs as a pruner of grape vines, a job picking gum tree nuts off the old growth forest floor, a takeaway shop (greasy food and sammiches), Taxi driver, Cafe staff, and delivery driver of dominoes pizza. Many of these places said they would call me back and then didn't. Finally I found a job planting onions, which i wrote about in my last post a bit, and then that ended and i moved to davenport to do collyflower picking. I'll write about that a bit later...

But i'll write a bit about my last days in launceston. I moved back into the Launceston backpackers, a nice place that has a piano and some nice people staying there. I stayed there before during the summer and it was crazy full of people, and it was nice to be there during the quiet season. I met alot of canadians too, including a group of students doing volunteer work (although i do'nt think they were required to work all that hard, because they told me they did tree planting, and said they planted about the same number of trees in a week that i did in one day). A couple of things really do annoy me about backpackers: one thing is getting my stuff stolen- i've had my sweet little tape player with the speaker on the side stolen, and one day i had most of my laundry stolen off the line which was a terrible loss- i lost all my sweaters, or, as the australians call them, 'Jumpers'. Also, it was all too easy to lose food. This one time during the summer months i put my bag of groceries that i bought into a box in the fridge, because it was the only free space there, and later, after all the groceries disappeared, i found out that this was the FREE box, only it didn't have a sign on it telling me that it was the FREE box. i might have written about that in here before, but it still annoys me because there should be some warning to someone who might mistakenly put his groceries in the free box by accident, perhaps a sign that says FREE would have worked... and there's always the possiblity of getting your food stolen, because i can't watch my stuff all the time... and another annoying thing is how i always get my food covered in crap from other peoples food on the higher shelves in the fridge- like my bag will be full of some sticky mystery liquid, milk, or blood from some nasty meat. GROSS. There are some nice people though, and the thing about traveling is you'll always meet new people.

So now im in Davenport, working the collies. I'm staying in this backpackers that used to be a hospital or something, and because it's the off season, there aren't many people staying there, and i have my own room, which is great. There aren't alot of people here which is nice, and there is a comfortable common room with a fire place and sweet tv satellite. One annoying thing, i've noticed it alot but especially here, is pee on the toilet seat! i guess some people never learn.
Last night was friday and i went out after a friend gave me some vodka here. There was a girl i wasn't all that attracted to who was kindof being friendly with me; i think she's a really cool girl and everything but we're much too different for it to work i think, and she swears so much! The tasmanians swear alot generally, and she's not as bad as some that i've met. One word that i find harsh is the word CUNT, but locals here don't seem to mind it, and they tend to use it in speech often. Perhaps i'll write a bit more about speech differences at the bottom, as i have been doing in earlier posts. I've been doing alot of reading as well, and have read just under 20 books since i got here, and i have a pile waiting to be read as well - the libraries here are great, and i've been taking advantage of their books as well as their internets.

One time i was in this takeaway shop and i saw what i thought was Cosmopolitan magazine, or Cosmo, the womans magazine. I thought i'd take a look at it, because sometimes i like to read those types of magazines; even though i don't like to be seen reading them, i feel like i'm spying on women by reading their trashy mags. anyways,, it wasn't cosmo, it was Cosmetic surgury magazine, a thick glossy magazine devoted to plastic surgury with really nasty before and after pictures. It's something i've never seen before, i wonder if they have it in canada.

I'm sure most people know of the Tasmanian devil, but maybe not everyone knows it's giong extinct. It's kindof gross how it happens, but i guess the tassie devil is a kindof gross animal in the way it lives. See, the tasmanian devils eat other dead animals, and when they're eating a corpse of a wallaby or kangaroo or whatever it is, they fight and bit over the corpse biting each other. But the thing is, this biting and fighting over food causes the spread of an infectious disease, or, it's like a mouth cancer.

Here are a few more speech differences i've noticed. When someone on TV is announcing the weather, it is either cold/rainy/cloudy/whatever OR, FINE. And another thing i've noticed on the news is they say, 'and now we move on to sport', like in canada we have the SPORTS part of the news, but in australia, it's just SPORT, and australians love their SPORT, especially FOOTY (haha).
I've also noticed some differences in names- i can't remember where this came from, but there was a man/ woman couple named MIF (the woman) and HAMISH (the man); apparently Hamish is a common name for a guy. weird eh? I also might have written about these two guys i met, named ASHLEY and COOKIE; in canada, ashley is a girls name, but i guess it's more of a guys name here, and cookie i thought was a weird name but apparently it's only a nickname- at the the time i thought, 'it's weird how australians name their kids 'COOKIE'.
There's something about australian speech; it's not that they're lazy when they're talking... or maybe they are talking in kindof a lazy way, but it's not like there's anything wrong with it i guess, it's just different. Like, when a word ends in A, like the word area, or australia, an australian would say the word as if it ended in an ER, like AIRYER, or AUSTRALIER,,, and to oppose this, if a word ends with ER, like the words worker, eater, killer, filler, ,, those words would be said, WORKA,EATA, KILLA, FILLA, or whatever. i think that's a strange difference. Also, if someone says the word NO, they actually say NOY, like as if they were saying soy, like the soybean kind of soy. I had a bunch more examples but my hands are cold and my time on the internet is up....

As usual, i have little time to type. Not enough to type everything but still i feel i should get something down.
typing is much faster for me than writing, i can get my memories down before they're gone.
anyways, im here at the internet lounge for a couple hours - i can afford it now. I've been working and i got another loan / gift from the parents. For a long time i didnt have work but now I've been enjoying onion planting. It was a pretty good job while it lasted, got a weeks worth in, and i can go down to cavenport to cut collyfolower, if i want. I was working with cool people, and we were lying on this mattress on a rig being towed by a tractor, and with onions in front of us we planted the onion in a row dug out by the tractor, root down was the goal and we had someone behind the tractor checking to make sure that we planted ROOT DOWN. (anyone who knows the beasties will get the joke HOW I GONNA PLANT IT, GONNA PLANT IT ROOT DOWN, but noone i worked with did,) It was a boring job and sometimes i would change the words of pop songs to fit in with onion planting. Such as this one sung to the tune of We are the Champions

--WEEEE are the planters of the onions,,
DAH, ,, DAH,,
and weee'll keep on planting, till the end of the row
DAH DAH DAHHHH,
then we'lll plant another one,
AND THEN WE:LL PLANT ANOTHER ONE
no time for slow hands,
cause we plant the un-yans,
..... IN THE FIELD!!!!

...And there were a few more that i can't think of now. It was pretty sweet getting paid 110$ for 6.5 hours of work. I should get another sweet paycheck soon enough... perhaps tomorrow.

OH there is one thing i would like to talk about, perhaps i will call it a series of unfortunate events. I'm sure i've touched upon the subject here in this BLAHG; my getting a small appartment, then losing my job and being unable to pay for the appartment.
On this I should say that things were going pretty well at first. A small 1 bedroom appartment was a welcome change after spending two months or so living in 6 or 8 bed dorm rooms with a lot of other stinky snoring people. But my problem is getting up in the morning- i found it difficult, especially after coming home after a long day of tree planting, going to bed without dinner because i was too tired to make it, and then hitting the snooze alarm the next morning, thus sealing my fate and losing my job. Yeah i can't help it, I'm a dreamer, sometimes i like the dream world so much better than this one... what happened was, i was a little late for work, and i ended up missing the ride out to the tree fields. About 5 days later, i got a text message from my boss telling me that i'd lost the job.
And now the plot thickens. A friend, cookie, who set me up with the place, came over one morning asking if he could buy the single mattress in the appartment. I told him he couldn't buy it but that he could use it, so i drove it over to his place with him, under the conditions that in the future he would have to return the bed. So he ended up giving me 100 dollars for the bed, which i accepted because i didn't have any money at the time. My plan was that I would pay him back once i had a job, because at the time I didn't have enough money to pay rent. I do'nt feel like talking about this too much longer, but long story short, i had trouble paying rent, and i was getting a phone calls from Ella on my cell phone but it didn't have any money on it so i wasn't getting her calls, and then Ella calls cookie and asks what's up with paul have you seen him, and cookie is like, yeah he sold me the bed a while ago, and ellas like what the fuck is he doing selling you MY bed. This was on a friday, and i spent the whole day hanging around the library waiting for an email money transfer to come through ( it never did come through) and i needed to pay rent, and now ella is freaking out thinking im a theif, and she calls her dad who comes to the appartment and sits in his car all day waiting for me to arrive. So im at the library when i get a call on the cell phone that works, and its cookie and he's upset and not making much sense but he tells me that shits fucked and everyone is pissed because they didn't know how to get ahold of me, and they're going to call the police because i sold ellas bed, and her dad is waiting outside the appartment for me. That totally sucked. So when i get back to the place, the angry dad is there; i assume it can all be explained, but he doesn't listen to anything i have to say- he doesn't even shake my hand when we met, which is understandable because he'd been waiting outside my place for a long time waiting for me to arrive. Anyways, i'll finish up this by saying it was a mistake to get the appartment, i have trouble holding a steady job, and my parents are great for sending me money when i run out.
i've got a point form list of a bunch of other stuffs i'd like to talk about but im going to have to stop this now cause thinking about that appartment has got me annoyed. GRR

i've been having trouble finding work, and even considering returning to canada, thinking it would be better for me to go to school and get a trade so i could make money easier as a piano technician making 80 dollars an hour and enjoying what i do, how much better is that than wasting time not working and trying not to spend money while looking for a job and not finding one but i guess not looking hard enough but why would i want to stay here anyways when there are so many other places i could go to find work. what should i do?? I'm thinking i'll move down south to hobart; i still have much to see in tasmania.
I have a car now, had it for a few weeks now, it's pretty good but im living so close to down town anyways i can easily walk anywhere. but yeah no job thing is making me think i should move on - i couldn't cut it as a tree planter, or, well, i was late for the 6.30am meeting in the parking lot of the grocery store and the rest of the guys went to work without me.. And i lost the job! it's not like i didn't try to make it, i just missed them. my reason for getting the appartment was to work for a while saving money before i can travel more and that's still my plan but i now need to start over. Maybe i can someday get to the mainland and work in some resort somewhere or restauraunt or feild picking vegetables or packing pumpkins into boxes or some other seasonal farm labor that a backpacker can easily get. unfortuntetly for me, it's hard to get work in tassie right now, but like i said, there might be a job working in some takeaway shop.

Tonight i was driving on the 2 lane highway through the bush, and i almost hit a kangarooo, i had to break real fast, the brakes squeeled, and the kangy jumped off a little scared. he's one of the lucky ones. The roads here are littered with dead marsupials; and i could often see their glowing eyes in the bushes on the side of the road.

Its saturday night so i might make my way down to the downtown where it should be getting interesting considering its past midnight. Can't spend any money but i feel ok about that, i just feel different enough already being a quiet one in a group of loud tasmanians on the drink. Should be fun though, maybe i'll set up in the mall, a street for pedestrians full of stores and benches, and watch for pretty girls asking me about canada and fights between drunk guys being like, ya lookin at me mate? yeah ? whydo'ntcha comeover heren' say that eh? eh?? arggg. There's no late night food except for greese, but i do have a good salad mixture with marinated tofus back at me place should fuel me up after a day without eating much.
Last night was fun. I hit up a bunch of bars but didn't drink anything cause i drove in to town. I later was annoyed at driving in because someone decided to let the air out of my tires, all four of them, like they unscrewed them and let the air out with their finger or something, because when i tried to drive on the highway i really noticed when it wouldn't go above 50 km an hour. That was rude, but anyways, the bars were ok, saw some music that was also ok, was hanging out with rasta who is fun to be around, he's really keen on starting a band with me but i dunno if it will take off because he's so much of a stoner and as much as i like it i'm trying to lay off it a bit and, as much as music and weed seem to go well together it's not always an improvement on your skills when you want to do something like organize what two or more people are going to play, and as much as i like listening to reggae im sometimes not sure i can stick around here to play in a reggae band when i should be traveling or , i dunno, be in a different type of environment than that, like i've been doing alot of reading but when i do hang out with nayah and eli or whoever else it is that's over at their really nice and comfortable house full of interesting things i know im going to be getting high with them which is a burst of energy but also a downer in a way because later i'll feel tired or lazy and in no mood to read or go out or make any real decisions although definitly coming up with good ideas yet not putting them into ACTION. like now im going to take action and go out, find some food maybe or just eat my salad at home, go downtown find some fun because tomorrow i'll hopefully be working in hobart.

also there's something called Footy that seems to be everywhere, all over tv and news, all australians love it, it's their national sport, but there's alot of it i think is weird and different and annoying, the players are very violent with one another and also very affectionate with each other to the point when i'm laughing at them rubbing each others stomaches or patting butts. Oh there's another thing on tv, a trend where there's alot of shows that have young teenage girls who are really badly behaved and then they're kicked back into shape, like there's one with a group of british girls go to the mountains to camp out as punishment for their drugs and stealing and drinking and smoking and swearing and being badasses, and the shows are so full of drama and fighting and hilarious scenes of teen girls who are usually hotties just getting into crazy situations and untimately becoming better people through tough no nonsense authority figures who are in this one i've been describing- the mountain bootcamp show, but theres another show called Ladette to lady that's usually pretty funny, but in a way it seems like they're always putting the girls in situations where the old british teacher ladys are like ok we're going to leave now and you can drink wine but don't drink to much because that would mean that you aren't a lady, and then the ladys do end up getting real drunk and get filmed doing crazy shit like fighting or throwing food or flashing the camera or yelling or hitting on random dudes in a pub. but it's set in this fancy mannor house estate place that's really huge and they go through weird tv reality show situations and at the end of the episode one of them gets kicked out. And yeah, more waste of time on tv but i'm sitting in my appartment watching because i don't have much else going for me here, it just sucks i agreed to keep this appartment. There was an annoying situation that i might write about later but not now, involving the appartment, but i tired of type, it's now 1am!!!!!!!

hmm it's been a while since i've done a real post so here it is

i can't remember what i talked about in my last post here, i think i just wrote about some weird dreams i had. Well i'm still having weird dreams as usual but i'll try and talk about things giong on in the real world for now. what have i been up to? have i talked about my tree planting yet? maybe a little bit, but i only worked there for 3 days before i missed work that 4th day and i guess lost my job because of it. It was a good 3 days. Interesting conversation and people- i remember a few of the funny things the guys were talking about, and the funny things they did. the whole operation seemed kindof amateur, from the gay jokes over the hand held radios (dusty is a homosexual, repeat, dusty is a homosexual , over) , to the huge fire they would set at the end of each day where they'd burn all the cardboard and plastic from the boxes that used to have trees in them. I remember seeing the guys looking at the 'people' section of the newspaper, which was just a bunch of pictures of people out at clubs or wahtever, and the guys are like, 'yeah i had sex with that one, that one, last weekend i slept in between those two', ,,, yeah come to think of it i have alot of sexual stories from treeplanting. I overheard them talking about how a woman once died for trying to have sex with a horse. i was like what really?? another time they were talking about how when one of them was 16 and at a pub an older lady took him home, and later she was like , how old you think i am, he guessed 28, she was like no higher, he guesses 30, she's like no higher, and finally it is revealed that she is 48. Then this other guy tells the story that one time he was drunk and he met this older lady who was drunk as well, and the lady asks where he's going and guy responds -whereever you're going--- so they go back to her place, which is actually an old folks home, because she's 72 years old, and i guess they make love, and it must have been an ok time because the guy goes back a month or so later to see the lady again (this guy must have been like 30) and he knocks on her door, and the neighbour comes out and tells him that she died. ouch. OH and this is an even weirder story. i'm back at the truck to refill my bucket with trees and i hear a yell, and, i didn't see this, but apparently one of the guys became aroused somehow while sitting and eating lunch, so he unzips, pulls his hardon out and is like, hey , check this out! and the other guys like aww mate that's nasty! Then the other older guy (the guy who got with the older lady) goes to tell a story about how another guy they used to work with pulled the same joke on this other guy who was from scotland, and then he did an impression of the scottish guys reaction to this other guy pulling his dink out. Meanwhile im thinking, weird eh, how tasmanian dudes would pull out their peen just to show other blokes that they got a stiffy. Now that i think of it i know i have a friend who did that once (B.B.) but i still think it's pretty weird anyways, doing that. I guess it's too bad that i didn't last more than 3, because otherwise i'd be laughing or shaking my head at all their crazy treeplanting antics.
What else is going on. It's getting cold out. I have NO money, im so poor it's ridiculis. I've been watching tv a bit, and i think it's sometimes so stupid, for example: ET: Entertainment tonight is still talking about the osmonds, donny and marie osmond, WHO CARES ABOUT THE OSMONDS?? there is a show called cheaters, where a team of Private investigators spies on a spouse and then they go and confront them with upsetting results. I saw a show that's about telling the truth, but what they do is ask terrible questions for money, like are you glad that your mother lives really far away? YES. Do you trust your boyfriend alone with your best friend? NO. Have you ever slept with someone to further your career? NO. OH NO you loose because the polygraph test has found that to be a deceptive answer. sorry. Oh yeah and i saw another one last night that was a bunch of guys together fighting over one girl, and they had to guess which one of the guys was gay- it was an australian show, it was so weird. lots of closeup shots of someone being like, i think cliff is the gay one because he's always doing this or that,, and then they're like, ok you all need to run a race to the clothes line to see who can get the best looking shirt for when you 're alone with the girl, and all the guys are like, i think I"M the one for her and i'm NOT gay.
Anyways, enough about TV. What the hell am i going to do for money? I'm thinking about working for Forestry Tasmania, picking nuts of the ground which they will later use to plant trees. It seems like a sweet job, walking around in old groth forests picking nuts off the ground and getting 80$ each bag i pick. Could be sweet. But im not sure how much longer i'll be staying here because im seriously considering giong back to london ontario in september and going to school to become a piano technician. Also i'm feeling kindof lonely out here, missing canada, ect
OK well here are some more little facts about tasmania.
There is no tipping, in restauraunts or bars or anywhere. It's kindof cool, because im so used to upset bartenders (karova in monreal especially) who get really upset when i don't tip them. Also there are no taxes, or, there are but you don't have to do the math in your head- the price is what is on the pricetag and that's great!
AND HERE ARE SOME MORE WEIRD AUSTRALIAN TERMS AND SAYINGS:
1 Hit the terbs- this means to get drunk.
2 Meet some sheilas- to meet girls, a sheila is a girl you'd like to meet.
3 Get some tucker- this is to get some food, if you're hungry, you'll get some tucker.
4 Full as a fat ladies sock - this is after you've got your tucker and eaten it, you're full

Here are a few points i wrote down on a book I recently read: lectures on natural theology by carl sagan, from the mid 1980's.


A serious search for God is one with rigorous standards of scrutiny. How is it that the eternal and omniscient creator from the bible can assert so many fundamental misconceptions about creation? Is the earth 6,000 years old? Have we been created separate from all other living things, or have we evolved over the eons through natural selection? Which offers the more satisfying spiritual experience? Science or Genesis?
Perhaps the little we know about nature suggests that we know even less about God. The laws of the cosmos guide the evolution of trillions if not infinite amounts of stars and worlds. With our new knowledge, we've made the God who created "THE" world seem hopelessly local and dated, bound to transparently human misconceptions of the past. Why separate science from sacred; searching for what is true from the truths which inspire love and awe. our understanding of the sacred is complete, while the search for Truth is never ending. One should search for sacred knowledge, not a pallative for ones fears. What should be wanted is not the will or faith to believe, but the desire to find out; which is the exact opposite.
Institutional religion, choosing to deny new revelation, can do little more than build a protective wall around itself. We cling to a spiritual ideology that is rootless in nature, and in many ways, contemptuous of what is natural. We are star stuff, pondering the stars; organized assemblages of 10 billion billion billion atoms. And we humans are tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.
Is God but the wall that stops all further questioning? Why does something exist rather than nothing? Who are we? Why are we here? It's through errors, and asking questions, that insights emerge.
We sit somewhere between godlessness and superstition; superstition being belief without evidence.
The word religion comes from the latin for 'binding together.' The objectives of religion and science are identical, or nearly so, but the question has to do with the reliability of the truths claimed by the two fields, and their methods of approach.
It's difficult to know WHO we are without knowing WHERE and WHEN we are. The universe is mainly made of nothing; something is the exception. Darkness is common; light the exception. The universe is almost complete impenetrable darkness, and the sparse sources of light, the stars, dot the prevalence of black. The world we live on is part of a vast collection of worlds, many of which are much smaller, few of which are much larger. There are about a trillion such worlds around our sun. And our star , of course, is one of a vast multitude. The stars we see in the night sky are part of a huge concentration of stars that we now call the Milky Way Galaxy; one with a specific shape, and specific center; 400 billion stars,of which our sun is one. The sun is a reasonably typical star in the Milky Way, located somewhere on the edge, far from the center. And there are many galaxies; more galaxies in the universe than stars in the milky way. This vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, has not been taken into account, even superficially, by the religions of the world- especially the western religions....
It seems the earth is of very little consequence. We've learned that the earth is not the center of the solar system; in fact we have learned that there are a great many solar systems. It was unsettling to discover these facts. The church threatened to torture Galileo if he persisted in the heresy to claim that the earth moved around the sun. It was serious business. When we see a comet or a supernovae explosion with the naked eye, what does that do for the idea of perfect unchanging heavens? Geological and paleontological evidence accumulates, proving that the earth is much older than a few thousand years. And so, in time, as in space, we've been wrong; we know know that the earth is 4,500 million years old. The debate continues.
And what about creationism? Does the complexity of a single bacteria show evidence for a creator? Or, is it possible for enormous order to emerge from a more disordered natural world, without a creators 'hand.' The idea behind natural selection is that there is hereditary material which had the potential for spontaneous change, expressed in external form or function of an organism, and that organisms made many more copies of themselves than the environment could support, and therefore that some selection among various natural experiments was made by the environment for reproductive success; this means that some organisms, by pure accident, were better suited to their environment and to leaving offspring than others. Over immense vistas of time, the complexity and beauty of the biological world on earth may evolve. The universe is consistent of the evolution of stars and planetary systems; life and intelligence have evolved- at least here.
Is the universe designed with the goal of generating and sustaining observers? Are there multiple universes? Alternative universes splitting off at every instant?
It was long believed that the planets were held in their orbits by crystal spheres, controlled by the gods or god. Once, god was thought to control the bloom of each and every flower; which we now know to be false. As sciences advance, there seems to be less and less for a god to do. It seems that whatever we can't explain lately is attributed to a god- and then after a while, we explain it, and so it's no longer gods realm. Now, it seems that maybe god got the universe going, established the laws of nature, then retired, or went somewhere else. The most major question is now the origin of life. The evidence is fossil record. Animals over the eons are too similar, chimps and humans are very similar too. We see the remains of species extinct, even recovering their organic matter. What we have today is quite different from what was present at the time of the origin of life. But we have seen organic molecules in the comets, and data that suggests complex organic molecules in the outer solar system, and everywhere else for that matter. There is evidence to suggest that the origin of life is in some sense, located in the laws of physics and chemistry.
When a religion believes the world will end, or that with enough faith its believers can levitate, what are the skeptical to think. Perhaps with more faith it would work. In reality, there are probably more liars than believers. Because the same motivations, people claim they were abducted by aliens, or that they have an original religious relic like a piece of the true cross. And of the ancient religions- history is re-written over time. If all wisdom passes through a small group, or priesthood, think of how they could change the facts or fabricate new fantastic tales of gods and men.
In religious questions, if we have an emotional stake in the answers, if we want so badly to believe, then it should be important to know the truth and be skeptical. Like buying a used car, it needs to work; a friendly salesman is insufficient. Natural theology is theological knowledge based on reason, experience and experiment alone; a somewhat novel look at religion.
The Romans called the Christians atheists, because they didn't believe in the Olympian gods. Judiasm, christianity and Islam are very similar, having a god that is omnipotent, omniscient, compassionate, loving, created the universe, responsive to prayer, intervenes in human affairs, and so on.... but what if we had proof of a being that had some of these qualities; originated the universe but indifferent to prayer, omnipotent but not omniscient, or oblivious to the existence of humans? The range of hypotheses covered under the idea of 'god' is immense. God could be thought of as the total number of physical laws in the universe; gravitation, plus quantum mechanics plus unified theory, plus more. Laws that apply to the most distant galaxies. There is great power in this regularity- no one can deny the laws of nature.
There is a huge range of belifs, and a grab bag of religions and alternatives. Usually, a religious convert joins the religion of their community; people from the west rarely have visions of a blue headed elephant god, as is common in india. How is it that appreciation of an elephant god happens only in India, or in places with a strong indian tradition? Why are visions of virgin mary common in the west and not the east? Why don't religious belifs cross cultural barriers? Religion is culture, music, art, ritual; attractive to the young.
Would you accept a new prophet, claiming revelation from god, and saying all previous religions are false? First, I woudl ask, what is the evidence? It is insufficent to say "well, a really charisthmatic person told me!" We cannot depend entirely on what is said or written.
But, you may ask, with the world full of things, who made them? You could say: the universe was always here, or, god was always here. Or ask, what happened before the 'big bang'? Or do we live in an oscillating universe with an infinite number of expansions and contractions? The answer will surely be found in contemporary satellite astronomy.
The universe and god- Is there no beginning and no end? Maybe beginning with no end, or no beginning with an end? A universe with a finite or infinte age?
And what of intellegence? Did god put it there or was it natural selection? Is consciousness a function of the number and complexity of neuronal linkages, archetecture of the brain?
THESE 4 STATEMENTS CANNOT ALL BE TRUE
God is benevolent.
God is omniscient.
God is omnipotent.
Evil exists.

Arguments for the existence of god, in the western sence, are not very compelling- they go after the emotions. Why is god so clear in the bible, yet so obscure in the world? Why is god never seen?
Hammurabi said that his code of laws was given to him by the god Marduk; a claim that probably isn't true because, when you think about it, his subjects would be more likely to follow the laws if a they were given to hammurabi by god, more so than if hamurabi wrote them up himself.
What does religion offer? Ethical standards for adults, stories for children, social organization for adolescents, ceremonials and rites of passage, history, literature, music, solace in times of bereavement, continuity with the past, faith in the future. But there is much that religion does not provide....
Tradition is a precious thing- it is a gift from our ancestors, but it is important to remember that it is created by humans for their purposes. In a changing world, our survival depends on our ability to change rapidly. Indeed, there is unprecedented change occuring right now, in 2008. We've moved from the spead of horses to the speed of rockets; and in communications, the speed of light.
We, as humans, want to investigate the natural world, and the nature of ourselves. Many different animals have intellegence and emotions, but it is our intellegence- our interest in figguring things out; our manipulative abilities coupled with our engineering talents- that is responsible for our success. Our populations are HUGE, with outposts everywhere, including antacrtica, the ocean depths, earths orbit,moving outwards to other planets, and with the voyager space probes, beyond the solar system.
We started out as itinerant tribespeople millions of years ago, with loyalty only to a small group, an allegiance to about a hundred people. Groups merged and grew large, became city states, settled nations, and empires. Today, a person is typically a mix of political, economic, ethnic and religious identifications, owing allegence to a group or groups consiting of a hundred million or more. Soon, identity will be with the Human Species.
But our history is, in part, a battle of inadequit myths. The idea that I have accepted a conventional wisdom that no longer, if it ever did, corresponds to an external reality is something to consider. It's a painful realization; but in a complex universe, in a society undergoing unprecedented change, how can we find the truth if we are not willing to question Everything? Very few religions accomodate the astonishing discoveries of the last few centuries.
How rare is it that we see a projection 20, 50 or 100 years in the future of a world in which we have come to our senses and figgured things out? There is nothing that says we will fail. We have solved many difficult problems. It used to be argued that all kings were divinely selected by god- yet we are now enlightened and know that they are not. Slavery has been eliminated. The status of women has improved. Diseases, thought as inevitable and god given facts of life have been cured. We have accomplished much, yet there is still much to be done...
Kings and slaveholders claimed the divine right of their rule over others. We cannot limit ourselves to one idea, one religion, one language, or one planet. It takes courage to greet the universe as it really is; to avoid putting our emotional dispositions onto it, but to explore.
It is wrong for a religion to make false pronouncements on matters astronomical, physical and biological ( the Bible is quite clear about the earth being flat for example), even if they have made significant contributions to human behaviour. Isn't the goal of religion to have a personal god, to have a purpose for individuals? What is the purpose of life? Surely, you could say, it's not in the stars. But lifes purpose is not imposed from the outside. We make our purpose, we don't find it in a book written thousands of years ago.
If we can understand the issues, pose the right questions, point out the contradictions, then we can make some progress. It is within our capability to survive; yet if we don't make a change in our thinking, all is lost.

so last night i had this dream that was soo weird.
when i woke from it i turned on the light to write it down,
here is some of what i remember
-the location was montreal, somewhere-
where exactly, im not sure, it's kindof ambiguous.
kindof shifting between:
outside of casa/ an appartment above casa,
and my old appartment of 5752 and the above apt. of 5754.

the first thing i really remember is trying to go up a flight of stairs up to some party. I could hear loud music, there was lots of people on the street and in the stairway. I feel like this was, at first, outside of casa- that flight of stairs that always has loud music at the top. When I try to go up the stairs this girl runs up and grabs me half way and tells me to get down, or get out, or get lost or something. There are lots of people everywhere and loud music, so we have a conversation where we yell at each other and don't really understand what we're saying, so finally i understand and go back down to the street.
So im back on the street, but now im not outside of casa. I'm still on st. laurent, but im outside what i think is 5752/5754. It's almost as if I had returned from my travels and stumbled upon this party. There's the party upstairs, perhaps on the 3rd floor, that i couldn't get into, and it's as if I know that i am moving into 5754, I seem to know that one of the bedrooms there is mine. So it's like, hey, im home again, cool, the house is full of people, it's a crazy party, lots of interesting people, alot of people i know, other people i meet and they tell me they're in such and such a band that im familiar with so that's cool, and i end up hanging out for i;m not sure how long.
At one point i go into what I know is My bedroom, but it's full of other peoples stuff for some reason. There are a few guys in there too and they start passing around joints which I partake in. At one point I notice that, smoking with us, is the girl who kicked me out of the stairwell at the beginning of the dream. We can hear each other this time so i end up asking her why she kicked me out of the stairwell, why she didn't let me go into the party, and she says something like 'i couldn't understand you,' and she gave me a few reasons as to why she couldn't understand. I'm like oh ok. AND THEN i notice something really weird: i sense something in my mouth, and i realize that the reason she didn't understand me was because i had something in my mouth. so, i begin pulling out these small vynil records from my mouth, these really small records of various sizes and bright colors. It was so strange, I pulled out over 10 of them, and put them on a shelf in what i thought was supposed to be my bedroom. Then I noticed that the room was completely different than how it was when I first entered it. I begin to question the reality of this scenario- wait a minute is this a dream? And suddenly i'm alone in the place, and i like, wait this is clearly a dream because how often do i have records in my mouth....
then i woke up, reflected on the dream, turned on the light and wrote down what i could on the book that was already open to the page of dream records. This dream was so weird , but at the same time i really enjoyed it. such a cool atmosphere to it. a dark party in montreal. all i had to do to realize how much i miss that town was to leave it and go to tasmania. As beautiful as it is here , i must say that tasmania is no montreal, and comparing the two cultures, I would have to say that montreal is superior in many ways. When i left montreal i was feeling quite sick of it- too many people, too big a city, too much french i don't understand, too much social bullshit i want to avoid, too much marajawana that i could get too easily, too much sleeping in late ,and not enough meaning to my life, not enough money making oppourtunities or school. but yeah, now i'm kindof missing it, and thinking that i might someday return, go to university maybe. i dunno. Another part of me really is missing london ontario and thinking it could be great to live there again, go to western for the piano technician program, and just be in the city i spent my first 18 years again. I'm not sure. I'm also looking into Teaching english as a second language somewhere... somewhere in asia.

but i don't have too much time now, and i want to write down this 2nd dream i had last night. It's not as interesting as the first, and i don't remember as much, except that i was close to water, perhaps in london ontario where richmond st. meets the thames river. at one point i realized that I could levitate if i concentrated hard enough. after experimenting with this for a while, i would levitate myself over the rough water of the river. This was a great feeling. Then a bit later in the dream, a close friend of mine died, perhaps because he was trying to levitate as well, and failed. It was kindof sad; his mom was there, and i felt as though it was my fault. too bad. but levitation! how cool is that.

man i wish i could fly in real life.
i've got this huge volume of philip k. dick books, 5 books in one big book, and i think it's affecting (or effecting?) my dream life.
anyways i should go. in my current journal i have about 30 pages of dreams written down, maybe i'll write some more in here later.
yeah

also, because it's been a while, i'll post some more australian terms. because i don't have time, this is something i wrote on a friends 'wall' a while ago. These are just some, although i have a few more.


ARVO- afternoon.'see ya this arvo.''Wotta ya doin' this arvo?''Reckoned he was gunna deliver ém last week, an' he doesn't turn up till yesterday-bloody-arvo.'
BEAUT-very good, first class.
BITE-A request such as 'Can I bite you for a smoke, mate?' An aussie would hand you his packet and say, 'Sure-help yourself', unless he considered you to be a 'BOT'.
BOT- Anyone who lives by constantly 'putting the bite on' others is a 'bot'. Bots are allergic to work, impervious to insult, and although they have no visible means of support, are nearly always drunk.
DYKE- A toilet. Also known as 'dunny', a 'shouse', a 'toot'. A place in which to 'spend a penny', or to 'pay a visit', or to 'kill a snake'.The practice of 'kangarooing the dyke'- squatting on it with your feet on the seat - is reprehensible, and frowned upon by all purveyors of public amenities.
4 ways to say QUIT WORRYING, ALL'S WELL
'She's apples''She'll be sweet''She's Jake'
Rotten- drunk
Yabber-smalltalk, yacketty yack.
Yakker- work. A tough job is a 'hard yakker'
Yike- A brawl.

so im not sure what to do now, now that i've lost me job tree planting,
even though i hear that they 're not even working at the moment,
the last few days the guys were supposedly working for free,
going over trees that they've already planted,
and making sure that they're in all the way,
so in the end, i lost my job because i missed a day of work,
a day that I would have had to work FOR FREE,
like i would have worked all day WITHOUT PAY,
now, you'd think that I would be doing it because-
i had worked there and the work was not up to par,
and thus the team, including me, had to go back and re-do it,
but, thing is, this is work that the team did before I joined the team,

so, i lost my job because i failed to go in
on a day where i was supposed to work for free
to do a quality check on a field that i didn't even plant,
is that lame? i think it's lame.
anyways, im still waiting for them to pay me for my 3 days of work,
3600 trees, at, i think, 7 cents per tree

welll, I'm paid up for rent this week, and might have enough to pay next,
but i just need to be really careful, not spend much on food,
and have only free fun for a while,

-about a week ago i went inside that abandoned hospital near my house,
it was amazing, on a holiday friday (anzac day, like canadian november 11th)
It's this huge place, what can i say- Amazing!
the only thing i could do now is go back and take pictures,
the whole time i was there i was thinking how i'd have to come back.
It's pretty convinient with it right accross the street.
but it's kindof creepy at the same time,
not sure if i'd want to go back at night,,
I went there once during the day with 2 friends,
the young married couple evan and jenn i met grapepicking.
they were the ones that suggested we go inside and check it out,
and they wanted to leave almost as soon as we climbed through the broken window.
it was kindof creepy, it started pouring rain as soon as we got there,
there was broken glass everywhere,
i think the young people like to go in there and smash up the place for fun,
the first few floors are torn up the worst.
i find that kindof think beautiful in a way,
so after a few, that rainy day, we had to leave,
there were loud noises coming from the upper floors-
im quite sure it was the wind blowing doors open and slaming them shut,
whatever it was, it scared us and we took off,
i also know that there are possibly homeless people living there,
cause the first time in there i came upon a smelly room full of cloths,
,remains of meals, cigarette butts, and a bed made of hospital debris,
who knows maybe whoever it was still lives there,
not sure, ima go back with a camera sometime in the future.

lots more to say but i have to go now,

hey so there;s lots giong on, not much time to write it out,
been working, and hanging out,
still in launceston, tasmania,
was doing grapepicking, was a treeplanter for a little while too,
im disappointed tree planting didn't work out, but it was rough,
and weather in the winter here is pretty rainy,
seasons being opposite times from what im used to,,,
i expect to be kicked off the computer shortly but,
i thought i'd try and write a few things down,
i've been doing some writing in my book 8,
but sometimes i try to get things down in here,

anyways, treeplanting was rough,
and i got fired over text message.
brutal, and what sucks more is that,
i am writing a letter to my family in ottawa,
talking about the sweet job i got tree planting,
and after i write alot about how great thigns are giong,
i get the text saying im fired, brutal,

but i have a couple more possibly better job oppourtunities,
things is, i have to work before i can start traveling again,
i also moved out of backpackers, into a nice 1 bedroom appartment,
it's pretty nice, to have quiet back again,
quite a difference from staying in dorm rooms,

i was staying for a while at a place called Irish murphys,
it was nice, sometimes had the room to myself,
live music every night downstairs was sometimes good
sometimes bad, but it wasn't as loud as the cars that drive by,
-the cars here are reallly lout, people like to race them,
get them so loud, and drive around the block,
again and again some nights,

good that i moved out, now im not so central,
been meeting alot of people, work has been alright,
though i need to learn to save my money,
and also to get out there and have fun,
though i've been staying in and doing alot of reading,
that's been good,
and taking advantage of the library,
taking out books and free internet,
yesterday i scanned book 7 of self portraits,
and put them onto me photo website,
CHECKIT
hold that thought, i need to get off the computer

I;ve been in launceston over a month now. At first i was staying in a huge backpackers residence- it was really crazy, lots of people coming and going, kitchen and common rooms always full of people, most nights have alot of folks gettin' drunk and hanging out. I'm meeting alot of travelers; Germans, Frenchies, a few englanders, lots of people from all over asia, a couple canadians. There aren't many americans because i guess australia doesn't give Working holiday visas to the americans, only because america doesn't give them to the australians.
Things are pretty good, Still working the grape picking, and if i work that type of job for 3 months, i can extend my visa for another year. I'll see how much money i can make here in tasmania before i start traveling again. I'm not sure how long i'll be doing this. I sometimes think about going back to canada, about what i could be taking in university, and how life would so much more stable if i moved back maybe to london and went to western. But now that im over here maybe i should see how long i can last. Maybe go for the school thing in sept. of '09 instead of '08.
I ended up meeting a cool canadian dude, chris, didn't get his email, so maybe i'll never see him again, but he introduced me to this funky rastafari dude who wanted me to be in his band. He came back to the backpackers with me one night and I played piano for the drinking partiers. It was fun, everyone was yelling and being crazy, i might have written a little about it in here before. and this german girl was playing some cool stuff too, scott joplin i think, ragtime ditties which were much more crowd pleasing than my nocturnes and waltzes, i can play the sad songs no problem but when i get into the upbeat fast stuff i need to practice for a while before i can play at the full speed.
Anyways, I ended up hanging out with nayah the rasta kindof regularly, he wanted me to be in his band that he was setting up, and he seemed to be the go to guy for grass so that was cool that i could find some, and we'd hang out at Eli's house- Eli is this older tasmanian guy, very cool house that has a large storefront which is now full of instruments. it was named the reggae lounge. The band i was supposed to be in was a reggae band, and even though i'd never played reggae or even listened to much, I would still hang out with these older guys and play music with them. It was fun but Nayah had set up this gig for us even before we had practiced together, so with no songs or anything ready we had this upcoming gig over our heads and i was kindof stressed about it because we weren't all that good. We didn't end up playing the gig and i havn't seen nayah for a while, although i heard he is looking for me. I've just been so busy with the grape picking that i havn't had time to dedicate myself to reggae.
The grape picking has been fun. At the same time, hard work. I need to be outside the backpackers at 6.30 (in the morning!) to get a ride out to the vine yards.On our 2nd day we were approached by a younger dude, Evan, saying that they charged 10$ a day to get a ride with the employment agency and he would pick us up and drive us to work for 5 dollars a day, a sweet deal considering they were cool people, and stoners at that! They would smoke a drugjoint before work and after as well, in the car ride to and from where ever we were working that day- and considering how expensive the green is around here i was happy to have someone getting me high regularly (even if they put the nasty tobacco in mix, yuck).
Evan is from south africa and Jenn is a Californian; a young couple married 18 months ago, they're very cool people although they can sometimes argue, which makes me feel a little awkward being around that but most of the time things are pretty chill. There was another guy, a german named ben, super tall, blond and blue eyed, hard worker. It was the 4 of us driving to work every day.
One day, ben and i were picking partners, each of us on opposite sides of the grape row, as we had been doing for a few days, and we were approached by one of the boss dudes asking if we wanted to be bucket boys that day. Being a bucket boy, we had to walk behind a slowly driving tractor picking up the full buckets of grapes and dumping them into large bins attached to the tractor. Being a bucket boy is hard work, much much harder than being a picker, and after a day of being bucket boy i was so exhausted. when i got home from work that day, i had a shower, changed my clothes, and immediatly fell asleep (with my shoes on)- i had planned to do things that night, like make dinner and get groceries for lunches, but it didn't happen. The boss lady asked me how i liked being a bucket boy, and i said it was ok but i was curious if i would be getting paid more- NOPE. so like, why would i work 3 times harder than everyone else for the same amount of money? Maybe because im a young guy they thought I was a good worker, like they saw my huge muscles and thought I would be a good candidate for bucket boy. OH NO.
Then there was this one day that I had this job I didn't know how to do very well; It was to supply the pickers with empty buckets when they needed them. As a picker, the buckets are your ammunition. You always need to have a few spares handy, and you must keep your eyes peeled to be sure noone walks away with your buckets. There's nothing worse than looking for your bucket and finding that someone took it while you were paying attention to snipping the grapes. So like, my point is, buckets are in high demand, and it was my job this day to make sure everyone had them. And maybe it's because I was a little high and also because i didn't know what i was doing, that I was totally messing everything up- people would be going long periods of time without buckets. The empties were on the back of the tractor on the other side of the vinyard, and i would be somewhere all confused, not sure what to do, and meanwhile all the workers are like, grrr, there's no buckets ya idiot. The empties, at one point, were dumped at the wrong end of the line of pickers, meaning that everyone who needed them was like 500 meters away, and im there thinking that I should be tossing single buckets all about the rows, only i was throwing them in the area that had already been picked, so i had to gather them all up and carry them up to the angry pickers. And another time, I get a huge bunch of buckets thrown at me, and i pick them up and start distributing them only to have the tractor driver yell at me telling me there was a bunch of buckets a few pannels back that i had to get and what was I doing fuckin around and he told me that I should get my thumb out of my ass. well, to be honest, the buckets that he was speaking about, I had already grabbed them and distributed them to the pickers, so like, he was telling me to do work i had already done and telling me to get me thumb out of me bum. but whatever, I don't care if they think i'm an idiot, because the benefit of that was they took me off of bucket boy duty and let me be a picker again. I was all to happy to be demoted. And i've been picking ever since.
About a week ago, I was told that i had to leave my backpackers residence because a huge group of medical students arrived, which was annoying because I had my name written in the book, reserved i thought, but someone had erased me and so i had to move out... I chose to go to another backpackers called the i Irish murphys, and that's where i am now. it's 110$ a week to stay in a dorm room. It's above a bar that can be loud at night, so i need to keep my earplugs handy. There are usually live bands every night, or at least someone playing acoustic guitar. From what I've heard of the local musicians, they've got few original songs- mostly they cover songs that i find kindof annoying, songs that would be played on radio stations that i don't listen to, songs from bands like matchbox20 or , i dunno, i can't even think of any right now. I often hear the song that's like 'you've got a boyfriend, looks like your girlfriend, blah blah, february of last year,' , or i keep hearing this one that's like ' allllways have to steal my kisses from youu'. My first night at the pub, im asleep in bed because i have to get up early for work, and at 2.30 am these 2 drunk blokes come in and for the next hour or two they are the most annoying guys i've ever stayed in a dorm room with. they were so drunk and being so loud, with thick aussie accents, laughing and fooling around. I told them to stop being so loud because they're irritating me and i have to get up for work, and they're like, 'ohh fack off we're jist rootin'.' I don't think i need to type all the dumbass shit they were yelling, but even with my earplugs in I couldn't get any sleep at all. They actually had a food fight in the room, at 3 am. later, one of the guys was trying to sleep while the other one was still all high energy and pulling the blankets off his mate, yelling. ... man , it makes me a little mad just thinking of it. they ended up stealing so much food from these swiss people. needless to say, i didn't go to work the next day, and it's a bloody good thing that they checked out. It's funny because i was complaining to the manager about them when they come in and ask to check out, and all i do is quietly walk away. I should have said something but whatever. They were such ignorant blokes.
anyways, im still at the irish murphys, but i might try and find a small place of my own to stay in while i work and save money- i have almost no cash now and a huge credit card bill to pay off before i can move on. yet i have big plans, i'm goign to see the world (unless the economy crashes and the world explodes...sometimes i think it would be best to return to canada now before this happens instead of being stuck overseas when money becomes worthless and the rising price of fuel causes panic on a global scale...but whatever)
I'll end my post now with a few more australian terms that i've learned, starting with 2 that i've used in this post.
Bloke means a dude, just like it does in england. There is alot of terms from england used over here.
Root is a funny one. It means doin' it. Humping. My first encounter with it was with clint; when i was walking around with him he points out this guy walking downthe street, and he says, 'see that guy, good bloke, he's a pooftah though (gay), roots up the arse he does.',, and there was another time when he tries to set me up with a friend of his, he goes ' ya fancy a root?' im like what's a root, because i didn't know what it ment but i figgured it out pretty quickly. and he's like 'a root! you know, a root! she's kinda' large but, you know, she'd do it for ya'. A root's a root.' Needless to say, i did not take him up on it. I'll be sure to write all about my love life in a later blog post. but now i'll continue with this stuff.
Bloody is a term people use alot. Especially the main boss guy at the employment agency. It's kindof funny , and i've noticed myself using it , untill I thought about it and realized it's kindof a weird term, to call something bloody.
People here say no worries alot. It's kindof the australian equivalent of 'no problem', to say NO WORRIES.
another term i've noticed is ' Good on ya''- it can be used in alot of different ways.

but i have to go now, untill next time!
Bloggly yours,
p