I didn't starve! I got paid on Sunday and immediately paid my rent, so that's $155 gone already. Luckily it's the free sausage sizzle on Sundays so I didn't have to pay for my dinner. Then I drank a $3 bottle of awful wine before heading out with a few of the lads (and a couple of lasses) to see the last game of the current Premier League season play out at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow.
Live music and a whole lot of Irish made for a good time and watched the events on screen(s) as we all twisted our necks to keep an eye on the screens at either end of the room. Of course the really important game is the play-off final next Saturday, but for now Manchester United fans won't shut up about their 'history' and how they are still better than City because they didn't buy the title, blah blah sore losers blah,
Pictured: A bad winner
Monday I worked for 3 hours and got some free sausages! Nothing else happened. Seriously, I'm trying to save some money so no nights out for me!
Today I didn't need to work so I walked up Chapel Street and looked at things I can't afford and then bought some food (beans, pasta and tinned tomatoes FTW!). Nothing much else to talk about now (I did some laundry, but that isn't worth writing about), I'll be working for 3 more hours tomorrow and hopefully I won't be peer pressured into going out any time soon.
Working at the butcher's has a good advantage in the form of free, nearly off, food! Yesterday I work 3.5 hours and got 11 chicken kebab skewers, worth over $30! Sweet!
Before then I was talking with people at the hostel when waiting to go to work and it turned out Ed, a guy I didn't know too well but had been at the hostel for 6 months, was leaving! A couple of the girls decided to make a little bit of a party with balloons and... well, the rest wasn't really concrete, but hey, balloons!
I brought 11 skewers, I had one and shared the rest with Ed and anybody else that wanted one and they were amazing. Probably because I barbequed them, but maybe because they were really nice skewers.
Joel has a thing for skewers.
A good laugh, a few beers and some goon. All the ingredients one needs for a good hostel party.
Red hats help too.
But it's not all fun and games, especially when you get your 'balance' email from Barclaycard, indicating that things are far from 'balanced' and my Aussie money is on critical, which means I'm going to have to hold out until Sunday with a mere $10 for food. Luckily, there is a place called Lentil as Anything that serves some really nice vegetarian food for a donation of your choosing. The food is so good that I haven't had the heart to pay anything less than $3 for it and their chai teas are really good too.
So if you don't hear from me soon it's because I have died from an overdose of pasta and tinned tomatoes.
Never forget that, when traveling, it doesn’t pay to be too
sentimental. I have already made some good friends here in St.Kilda, but like
all hostels friendships shift and change at a moment’s notice
Now, I’m fortunate enough to be blessed with rugged good
looks and a sense of humour so wicked that I can make a German fall for me...
Everyone knows that isn’t a metaphor. To be fair, ‘falling’ is the wrong word,
‘flirting’ would be more accurate. Either way, I and a certain young lady had a
great couple of days/nights in which I went to my second day of work after 4
hours sleep because this particular leibling wanted to see the little penguins
at four in the bloody morning after a night at The Barkley.
Needless to say we put on quite a show for those penguins as
things got a bit steamy on the rocks. We both knew we wouldn’t be together long
as she was going to Cairns on Sunday night. I would feel like fate has deemed
it necessary to push apart the chances of finding a special someone, but I’m
not the kind of guy to care about ‘fate’. That in mind, there was an ‘uh-oh’
moment in the form of the line ‘you’re a lot older than me’. Having heard that,
it soon dawned on me that this may be a mistake. But, and it is an important
but, I didn’t even know she was nineteen until that night. I knew she must be
younger than me, but not ‘that’ much’ younger. Geez. T’is an odd feeling indeed
when you become ‘too old’ for somebody when you’re 26. I never thought I’d be
so unprepared to hear it, but one cannot let such things deter oneself. True to
form I stayed the course and at 5 am I finally returned to the hostel with a
new ‘close’ friend. So, work was tough the next day.
On the subject of ‘work’, I am now a meat promoter, standing
outside a butcher’s in a shopping centre letting people sample some of my
special meat products. It’s not a bad job, it’s like the charity fundraising thing I
did last year in Sydney except people are much happier when they get to try
some free food. Maybe ‘Save the Children’ should cook parts of starving
African kids to encourage people to subscribe?
Although there's more meat on these ones...
The job is going so well that I have been offered more
hours, sadly it still only adds up to 30 hours a week, which is ok but I really
want to save some money so I’m going to have to think of something that doesn’t
involve ‘full body massage’ as one text message I received in response to my
current Gumtree ad suggested.
So money is still an issue, but I’m hoping for something
else to come up. Meanwhile I’ve been hanging out with my fellow 'hostellers',
drinking, laughing and having a generally good time with some good folks, like
last night when we sat on the beach at 11pm.
Saturday, I and a few others went down to the Espy to take in
some live music and have a few quiet ones as I was still living on 4 hours
sleep from the penguin/hot loving session the night before (reading this blog
post back I now realise it’s maybe a bit all over the place, but whatever).
Luckily the music was pretty chilled out, like a slow Mumford and Sons, but
shit got closer to real when I noticed my 'close' friend getting a little
teary eyed. Did I mention she would be leaving for Cairns with her travel
partner the next day? Oh, maybe I should have. Well, she wouldn’t be in St.
Kilda much longer and clearly the mellow tones and harmonies of Mitch Davis and
the Dawn Chorus were highlighting that. So our relationship was on a tight
schedule and it ended up taking a long time to walk back to the hostel as we
kept stopping for little make out sessions in dark alley ways. And that was my
weekend, or what I can remember of it. I have a day off today before I start
giving passers by a portion in the shopping centre at Carnegie for 3 hours
tomorrow.
So, to play us off, here's Mitch Davis and the Dawn Chorus.
Back in a hostel environment and money is becoming an issue. Fortunately I have a part time job (18 hours a week) convincing people to buy from a butcher's shop in a shopping centre. I'm still looking for another job to make up the hours but at least I'm not going to starve.
It's a good hostel here, very social, plus there are quite a lot of long termers here which is a good sign. I've already had some good nights out the past week (hence the lack of funds) so it looks like I'll be here for a while.
I'll probably write something more detailed soon, but I'm going to be offline for a few days as my internet will be expiring tomorrow and I won't be topping it up too soon.
Right, back to job searching. Until next time, adieu!
