Times can be trying when you're apartment hunting. And job hunting. And purpose in life hunting. Sometimes there truly looks like just black at the end of that tunnel. But I'm making it sound like some depressing, Requiem For A Dream kinda setting. No, I'm not gonna start jabbing my arms and selling my gf off to the double dildo hourdes just yet.
I guess it feels like it's dragging on cos my househunting partner A is also in the same boat, and while he has just found himself a fulltime job, I have not been given the hours promised to me and am on the search again for another job or a replacement one, so I can actually afford to live and save for this bloody Caribbean flight.
Speaking of which, I am in talks with my mate's mate in the travel bizniz who is giving me a stupid discount on the flight and therefore staving off the need to sell my body (alot of body-selling in this blog...) for a little while, and hopefully meaning I won't leave Australia with a massive debt attached to my name. Now that will not be looked upon kindly by US immigration. As it is, I have had to be quite creative with my flight schedule to allow me inside the iron gates to at least have a trial period on the island. After that, I can apparently get residency easily and have no problems. It's all quite laidback there, I hear.
So in the time I've just taken to break from writing my blog, I have booked in several house viewings, paid for my flights to the US and gotten a job interview this afternoon. Woot! Talk about progress.
Alright, I better go. Blogging is not an extra activity I need to be doing at this point in time. Trying to make myself look respectable for job interviews and house viewings does take a fair few minutes.
Wednesday 13 July 2011
Thursday 7 July 2011
Caribbean calling
After a somewhat trying period of failed Skype meetings that stretched not only weeks but continents (first in Argentina, then Bolivia and now Australia), I was beginning to wonder if my number was up with this Caribbean gig. But, FINALLY, thankfully, mercifully, I heard the phone bring-bringing yesterday and rushed in to see my potential future employer on the other end, trying to reach me.
I got talking with the Dutch woman A and her American husband R, momentarily seeing them on video before realising it was easiest to chat without, and before long we were in discussions about when the best time for me to come was. This is positive, I thought, as she asked if I was interested in taking the position. Of course I said yes, and then confirmed that no one else would be slotted into my place while I booked flights from this end. No, they said, you're the one we want, let's shake virtual hands. God, I love technology.
So there you have it. I am now officially working my large, South American-style ass off to get to the Caribbean in mid-October in time to service the multiple cruise ships that are due to land at the St Maarten during high season (and beyond).
My job is with the horses at their horseriding business. Owning over 50 horses in total, I doubt I will have much time to scratch aforementioned ass but that makes for a more interesting workplace I think. No one likes to twiddle one's thumbs now... My duties will include taking tourists out for rides along the beach, into the water if they please (not like the weather is ever too horrible for it), teaching kids the basic skills, looking after the horses, helping manage the horsey activities and training the horses. I like the training part. It means I can bond better with them.
The salary is pittance, really, and I will be relying heavily on tips from the rich American and European tourists swanning about on the resorts and cruiseliners. Which is fine, because I think they have the capacity to be quite generous.
I can rent a cheaper room from my bosses until I find another place, and I hope those same friends I make will own or have connections to get their hands on boats so we can go on day or weekend trips away to other islands. I absolutely must not get stuck going crazy on a 25km piece of land. It's all about variety. Making friends, doin deals, swapping free rides here for free rides there, you know... it's BIZNIZ time. And the men... well, let's just say I am hoping for some stereotypically amazing black bodies to catch my eye. Hey, a girl's gotta eat!
Bring on October...
I got talking with the Dutch woman A and her American husband R, momentarily seeing them on video before realising it was easiest to chat without, and before long we were in discussions about when the best time for me to come was. This is positive, I thought, as she asked if I was interested in taking the position. Of course I said yes, and then confirmed that no one else would be slotted into my place while I booked flights from this end. No, they said, you're the one we want, let's shake virtual hands. God, I love technology.
So there you have it. I am now officially working my large, South American-style ass off to get to the Caribbean in mid-October in time to service the multiple cruise ships that are due to land at the St Maarten during high season (and beyond).
My job is with the horses at their horseriding business. Owning over 50 horses in total, I doubt I will have much time to scratch aforementioned ass but that makes for a more interesting workplace I think. No one likes to twiddle one's thumbs now... My duties will include taking tourists out for rides along the beach, into the water if they please (not like the weather is ever too horrible for it), teaching kids the basic skills, looking after the horses, helping manage the horsey activities and training the horses. I like the training part. It means I can bond better with them.
The salary is pittance, really, and I will be relying heavily on tips from the rich American and European tourists swanning about on the resorts and cruiseliners. Which is fine, because I think they have the capacity to be quite generous.
I can rent a cheaper room from my bosses until I find another place, and I hope those same friends I make will own or have connections to get their hands on boats so we can go on day or weekend trips away to other islands. I absolutely must not get stuck going crazy on a 25km piece of land. It's all about variety. Making friends, doin deals, swapping free rides here for free rides there, you know... it's BIZNIZ time. And the men... well, let's just say I am hoping for some stereotypically amazing black bodies to catch my eye. Hey, a girl's gotta eat!
Bring on October...
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Desperate for home
My alarm buzzed at 5am, around the same time I had woken up from insufficient warmth in my bed, to tell me to call the airline and check again what options I had of getting home. Fun times. Even funner when I got through and was told the alternative flight they were trying to organise had also been cancelled. Again, I lost it. Freezing and desperate, I wept into my hands alone in the kitchen.
Defeated, I went back to bed (with more clothing on) and slept until a buzzing, ringing sound from the kitchen woke me up. In my dazed post-sleep mode, it took me a while but I finally realised it was a phone and that phone was probably for me, considering O had no other way of contacting me. I had left a note telling of my predicament and was hoping she had gotten in touch with her friend from the airline.
It was her on the phone and she had gotten in touch with her friend, but as yet had no news because I needed to pass on details for my booking to try and get re-booked on a flight OUTTA there. Fast forward several hours and still no luck. Last I heard the alt flight was "collapsed' which I didn't entirely understand in O's second-language English but I imagined was not a positive outcome.
At this point, O suggested I go into the LAN office in town and basically stay until they found me another way to go home. I left with my UK flight agent also on the case and luckily so... when I finally got to the office, they told me I had been booked onto the alt flight. This confused me, but I took it and ran, it was my only hope. When my tear-soaked face returned to the house, I saw my UK agent was the one that booked the flight on my behalf, and I was eternally grateful for that.
Elated but still wary, I started packing for the flight - which was that evening - and told dad the good news. He'd been pretty much sleeping with the phone glued to his ear for the past 3 days - in fact, he was the one who had told of the volcano in the first place when I had no idea in La Paz.
In the end, I got a lift all the way to the airport by my CS host and delivered smack bang to the front door. Woot woot. I was mega early, keen to be checked in and sorted before some other mooch took my seat. I knew this flight would be full.
On board, I was sat conveniently between not 1, not 3 but about FIVE babies... this should be a fun flight. Felt like a creche up in there. And then the inevitable happened. I popped a sleeping pill and midway through my slumber, I was woken by almost all the babies simultaneously screaming their heads off. Fuck's sake!!! I was all disorientated n angry at being woken up, I think I actually yelled, "Fucking hell, are you serious????!!" with one of the parents right next to me. Ahh, fuck it, they should have kept the thing at home.
For the second leg of the 22-hour ridunkulous flight via Tahiti, I requested to have my seat changed as I was already on the edge of a nervous breakdown and didn't quite want to be dragged off the plane in handcuffs charged with throwing a newborn out a plane window... luckily, there was 1 other seat free (just 1) which I was moved into and I had peace n quiet. Except for the Aussie lady next to me quizzing me on my hair and general appearance "Did you find people would react harshly to you?" (like I'm some kind of freak haha)...
And then it happened. We touched Australian soil. After 3 long, adventurous years I was finally back on home turf for an undetermined amount of time. And it was a relief. After all that trouble I went to to get out of South America, it was a relief. And to see my dad pretty much already crying when I came out of Arrivals... well, that just topped it off.
I am home. Happy birthday to me.
Defeated, I went back to bed (with more clothing on) and slept until a buzzing, ringing sound from the kitchen woke me up. In my dazed post-sleep mode, it took me a while but I finally realised it was a phone and that phone was probably for me, considering O had no other way of contacting me. I had left a note telling of my predicament and was hoping she had gotten in touch with her friend from the airline.
It was her on the phone and she had gotten in touch with her friend, but as yet had no news because I needed to pass on details for my booking to try and get re-booked on a flight OUTTA there. Fast forward several hours and still no luck. Last I heard the alt flight was "collapsed' which I didn't entirely understand in O's second-language English but I imagined was not a positive outcome.
At this point, O suggested I go into the LAN office in town and basically stay until they found me another way to go home. I left with my UK flight agent also on the case and luckily so... when I finally got to the office, they told me I had been booked onto the alt flight. This confused me, but I took it and ran, it was my only hope. When my tear-soaked face returned to the house, I saw my UK agent was the one that booked the flight on my behalf, and I was eternally grateful for that.
Elated but still wary, I started packing for the flight - which was that evening - and told dad the good news. He'd been pretty much sleeping with the phone glued to his ear for the past 3 days - in fact, he was the one who had told of the volcano in the first place when I had no idea in La Paz.
In the end, I got a lift all the way to the airport by my CS host and delivered smack bang to the front door. Woot woot. I was mega early, keen to be checked in and sorted before some other mooch took my seat. I knew this flight would be full.
On board, I was sat conveniently between not 1, not 3 but about FIVE babies... this should be a fun flight. Felt like a creche up in there. And then the inevitable happened. I popped a sleeping pill and midway through my slumber, I was woken by almost all the babies simultaneously screaming their heads off. Fuck's sake!!! I was all disorientated n angry at being woken up, I think I actually yelled, "Fucking hell, are you serious????!!" with one of the parents right next to me. Ahh, fuck it, they should have kept the thing at home.
For the second leg of the 22-hour ridunkulous flight via Tahiti, I requested to have my seat changed as I was already on the edge of a nervous breakdown and didn't quite want to be dragged off the plane in handcuffs charged with throwing a newborn out a plane window... luckily, there was 1 other seat free (just 1) which I was moved into and I had peace n quiet. Except for the Aussie lady next to me quizzing me on my hair and general appearance "Did you find people would react harshly to you?" (like I'm some kind of freak haha)...
And then it happened. We touched Australian soil. After 3 long, adventurous years I was finally back on home turf for an undetermined amount of time. And it was a relief. After all that trouble I went to to get out of South America, it was a relief. And to see my dad pretty much already crying when I came out of Arrivals... well, that just topped it off.
I am home. Happy birthday to me.
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