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