A Change OF Pace

Well, we did go play cricket in the building I discussed in my last post (a TV studio)... and it just so happens that I am SHIT at cricket. I mean, I have the fear of balls (a long developed fear resulting from years of baseball, volleyball, and general ball sport mishaps) and a weak girly throw, so my initial odds were not staggeringly good anyways. I hit it twice, but the ball was thrown at me (lightly, as the boys took pity on me) far more times than 2. In the end, we decided that if they wanted to do it again (it was only 5 of us, noone else could make it) that I should either film it (Laurence was going to, but he wanted to play too badly) or be the referee, since I know the rules like no other now. I did climb a 2 storey ladder to the production walkways though, which was basically, one ladder followed by a plank, followed by another ladder. It did not feel overly stable, but I was very proud of myself for conquering it.

I have two jobs now, I think. I went through and interview for one, and made the other guy look bad (he was quieter, and I, being myself, was boisterous and loud) and got the job. I went in for training, and made the person I was training ith look bad because he was late both showing up and coming back from lunch, and I was early. My bosses even invited me to go to lunch with them, and after work we had beers. It was lovely. I go out on the field (I will be going door to door offering people the chance to switch to a new power company which has lower rates) on Monday. It is commission, and I am a little nervous about it, but I think I will do ok. The other job came as a surprise. I have been applying for primarily receptionist/admin jobs with the odd retail job, but the job that came to me is for an online auction company, where i will be doing 'admin' but it is basically helping people do money transfers internationally and such, and getting commission for it, plus a SWEET base salary. PLUS I can do this from home, PLUS it's only 3 hours a day, and I'm still making what would be sweet pay on a full time job.

It's kindof shocking to think that I went, in one day, from having no job and being upset about it and in tears and home sick and feeling like a failure to having 2 jobs, and what seems to promise, a stack of cash.

Wish me luck!

Today Tim and I woke up later than we had hoped, so we axed our plans to go to the art gallery, as it was likely to close around the time we would get there after showering and riding our bikes all the way into the city. It's not that far, but I am still very very nervous around traffic, so I go slow, and poor Tim has to wait and go slow with me, even though his bike is a fixie, and it is hard. A fixie, is if you don't know, a fixed gears bike, where when the bike's tire turns, the pedals turn. There are no brakes. To stop, you simply pedal backwards. Instead we opted to head to the botanical gardens and wander in there until sundown. We rode our bikes in, though I had to leave Lace at home and try a different girls bike just to see how it went, and that bike was shit. We wandered the gardens, and it was awesome! There are the typical paved paths, but there are also little sawdust and dirt paths through the bushes, so you feel like you're really IN the bushes. There were so many pretty flowers I haven't seen before, and lots of the Australian common flowers I always gawk at when I'm walking past people's lawns and gardens. There were also several trees that, I'm convinced, if there is a God, he made them SPECIFICALLY for humans to climb, they are THAT perfect. I am starting to get a cold though, so i felt achey and brain-foggy, so we went home without climbing. We didn't see much of the garden, only a small part, and we were there for just over an hour! I can tell there is much adventure to be had there. Hopefully with my new jobs I will be able to afford a camera soon, and fix Tim's laptop so not only will I be able to post our photos from our trip to the States and the first few weeks of Australia before we smashed the camera at the wedding, but I will also be able to take and post NEW photos. Oh also, I decided to wear the shoes we found in hard rubbish to be my exploring and drain shoes, just to see if they were any good, and they were comfy!!! Yess, old school adidas hi top kicks.

That said, we're going to an old-school homemade ice cream shop in North Adelaide tonight, so I'm gonna go get ready. ICE CREAM!

Art in Still Motion.

Our roomie Kev has a sister, Steph, that Kev, Tim and I go to visit every week or two. Steph is really rad, and it's neat being able to hang out with a girl sometimes. Well, anyways, Steph is a wicked good artist, and she had 2 paintings in an art show, in the upstairs area of a local bar. While some of the art there was really freaky... some of it not so good, three of the artists were really cool. Steph's paintings were amazing, I love her style, as were two different boys named Jake One and Jake Two. Jake one had this really cool cartoon style, and he had some pictures he drew on random items, then he also had two older scenery paintings that he has cut out his own characters and glued on, they were soo neat! The other Jake is a comic book style artist, and his characters were all really unique and well done. Lots of details even where they didnt need to be, they were excellent.

I've been so gung ho on the cricket the last few weeks, that I have gotten the roomies more into it that they were as well. There's a big abandoned building they love, and are quite sure it would be perfect for an indoor cricket game. I am very excited about this!!!

Tonight for dinner, I made sushi, and it was delicious, and I was very proud of myself. Go team!

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like...

Today Lace and I went on adventure with Tim and his bike.

We took our bikes to St Peters park, on the Torrens River. (Map below shows the end of the River St cul-de-sac, just below it is a small green blob, which follows the river to a BIG green space, which is all around the City proper (or CBD, Central Business District) We didn't make it all around, but we went through the Uni area. It was so awesome. The zoo is across the river from part of our ride, and since they are building (for the pandas!!!), the close side was blocked off. I still got a pretty neat look see. There were tons of black swans (I know, cool) and lots of parroty local birds, including some that look sortof like monsters from Silent Hill. They also have Quails, which are different from quails back home, since ours have flopped over round bobbles on their heads, and these ones have straight up, nazi helmet style feather spikes. Pretty awesome. Did I mention that they have BLACK swans?! Part of the river has this HUGE fountain, and it has fake origami boats, It was absolutely the cutest thing. There were a lot of people lazing around on the grass and enjoying their day, it was really cool that its right beside the huge bustley city, but everything in this park is just calm and slow.

That said, one of the panda's names is Wang Wang.

Have a great day!

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Random made up words.

Urbex.

This is what Tim and his friends do in their spare time. They go into buildings and drains and train tunnels and all this shit. This is something that is not only completely foreign and unheard of for me, but it is also nerve wracking in ways it should never be. I'm going to clarify now that I have no fear of heights. None. The only thing I am afraid of is climbing down on awkward ladders. Getting up is fine, looking down is fine, but I fear losing my grip. This has nothing to do with what we did though, as it was all stairs. Last night we went on top of some old building, and it had a metal roof. I did not realize this, but Tim said "you should check out the other side." Well to GET to the other side, I had to get off the wooden (stable) walkway and cross the actual corrugated metal (unstable) roof. I made it about 5 steps before my brain logged that "hey... this roof bends when you walk on it... hey what's that creaking noise?" At that point I lost every desire I had to go forward, and I was too terrified to go back. I stood there shaking by myself, because Tim was busy helping his friend take photos for his Uni class, which is actually why we went in the first place. It was awful. Then he came over, and not knowing HOW scared I was, made fun of me. Then called me out in front of everyone there to walk across it, and then walked over himself. I was terrified. But I lived. He didn't KNOW that I was crying the whole way, because it was dark and I didn't want anyone to know. Being the only girl, and being the only noob, is very very embarassing. I have always felt when I'm in a group that I have to keep up, it's just who I am, so it was very awkward and socially horrible for me. So then, I stood there, too afraid to look over the edge at the view, despite not being afraid of heights, because the already scary metal roof didn't go all the way to the edge, and there was a good 5-6 inch gap. So in all reality, I missed the whole purpose of being there in the first place, because I didn't feel I could ask if it was safe. Then Tim walked away. And I was stuck very very far away from anything considerably stable. Eventually I found which corrugation a metal beam was under, and powered all the fucking way across the roof. I then sat on some concrete and cried and shook some more.

I don't blame Tim for it, this isn't that kind of story, he had no idea how awful it was for me, and I didn't feel I could LET him know.

The moral of the story is that one should probably never ever try this urbex thing unless they feel comfortable embarassing themselves in groups, or have only one other person whom they can cling to if need be. At least until you know the ropes. Which I despirately do not.

It was not all bad though, next we went to another building they have in their repertoire, which was conveniently all indoors, and all perfectly stable (aside from creaky, but admittedly stable wooden floors.) Tim showed me around while more photos got taken, and not much of his help was needed. I actually really enjoyed it. It was this old professional building, and it had once housed several podiatrists (and endodiatrists, whatever the fuck that is) so there were all these creepy foot molds left behind. It was pretty cool. But it was also really creepy, because part of my brain was shouting "Stop! This is where horror films happen! Get out of these abandoned doctors offices!" Inevitably though, we had no run ins with zombie doctors, mangled patients, or creepy bioengineered mutants. Thank goodness.

We then went to the grocery store in town thats open all night. While we were drinking our milks outside (more on this later) there was this creepy old lady that I saw when Tim took me to the beach lurking about and she was MESSED up on drugs. It was very reminiscent of Grandma Death from Donnie Darko. She didnt cross the street many times, but she did go in approximately this order: 5 feet forward. Stop for 5 minutes and stare blankly. 5 feet back. Stop for 5 minutes and stare blankly. 6 feet forward. Stop for 5 minutes and stare blankly. 5 feet back. Stop for 5 minutes and stare.... repeat. She, she was making progress, but it was very creepy slow progress. She was much less drugged at the beach, and mostly just sat in doorways and on benches. So it was very weird. Then once we left to head back home, a few blocks later there was an old DUDE doing the same thing on another street! They had the same hair cut, and obviously the same dealer. It was weird. Fucking loonies.

I guess I didn't blog about my beach trip, so here goes. Tim and I went to the posh urban cosmopolitan beach the other day. Despite it being what neither of us like about beaches, I really wanted to go, and I figured now, the very beginning of spring, would be the best and least busy time. So we wandered. I collected some big shells that I have some great ideas on how to turn into jewelry once I can afford paint and other craft supplies. We also checked out this really wicked record store, which I may have to go back to. We walked to the end of the jetty, and looked out at the vast oceany horizon. I have never lived this close to the ocean, and it was amazing. I am absolutely excited about living here. The sand is so white and nice. It has this ridiculously amazing texture that I cannot even begin to describe. It is actually difficult to walk in because its so nice. I'm not going to lie, this shit tops Waikiki sand. Oh, and we saw a crazy lady. Hahaha.

Oooh, Eli and Tim and I also went riding looking for Hard Rubbish... Basically people are encouraged to throw out furniture etc they do not want and the city comes to pick it up a few days later, but people go and take stuff from the piles if they need it, its like a big community yard sale, only no money is involved. We went to the store after our ride, and Eli bought us ice cream treats. They were like Revellos, however, they had a layer of cookie crubs, then the chocolate outer of a revel, then a layer of frozen cookie, then the ice cream inside. And... it was called.... Golden Gaytime. The box had 4 in it, and the catch phrase was "4 delicious chances to have a gaytime!" I almost died of laughing. It was very delicious.

All of these adventures were brought to you by, my new bike. Which was a hard rubbish score the guys made. We have about 15 bikes in various state of disarray, but this bike is a full on girls bike, and therefore isnt WAY too big for me. They made it work, and now I keep to ride around on an old school chick bike. It's fucking SWEET. It's name is Lace. I did not name it this, but I accepted it full on.

Cricket!

So, the other night Tim, Will, and I were sitting around the tv... and CRICKET came on.... I was so scared. Cricket, I'm not going to lie, seems boring as fuck. Who on Earth would want to watch this shit. 5 day for ONE GAME? Well, it turns out, they also have one day games, which actually means 6 hour games, not 24 hours games. I figured I would make the best of it. So Tim and Will explained cricket to me, one over at a time. I now have a very large understanding of cricket. This is my third one day game. I am enjoying them more than anyone in the house (they say the games that have been on have been played poorly and aren't very exciting, which only means that cricket, which I am enjoying, can only get BETTER from here.)

Oh cricket, where have you been all my life.

On that note, earlier today I got a tattoo. Now, some of you know, some of you dont, but Tim and his friends are into home-done tattoos, and when we were in Canada I put a leaf on Tim's shoulder. Well he did this one, its the symbol from Hedwig and the Angry Inch and its in the middle of the right hand side of my back, just below the ribs. You know, right in that fleshy bit. It pretty much hurt like the dickens in a few places, but otherwise was tolerable. It took quite a while, definitely over an hour, and Tim said it was challenging because it is in a circle, and also my skin is apparently quite stretchy and doesn't like ink very much. I also start to bleed pretty nasty after I had a cookie break. Stupid cookies.

I have been experimenting with cookies, as NOTHING is the same here. We, in Canada, REALLY put a lot of sugar into everything, not to much here. I ate an Australian oreo, and I will tell you this, it was definitely not something I would eat a whole package of. In some ways I suppose that's good but.... ew. So, I decided to branch out. So far, so good. If you ever come to Australia, pretty much anything from Arnott's is go. Tim Tams are the best things that have ever happened to me. I also had Butter Nut Snaps, when I saw the package I was like squash cookies, wtf? But it turns out they were like Dad's brand cookies, but they were about 500% better. Yeeessssssss.

I had my first job interview the other day, they will let me know by the 21st how it went. I think I did well, but I don't have my hopes up excessively, because I'd rather not have them dashed by not getting my absolute dream job. I also don't want to jinx it by giving many details :D

More on that by the 21st!