20120907 Blue Mountain

Blue Mountain day with Lynn & Monkey. We're lucky to hitch the ride with them as it's our first time to go around Australia in a car not a railway. First time on the australian expressway is a bit of unexpected because of the plenty of cars on the road. With GPS help, we drove all the way to blue mountain echo point and three sisters and they're not really remote and abandoned as I would thought they are. The view is spectacular and all the pictures you look over in front of your eyes are just the green trees down the valley and extended to who knows how many thousand or maybe million acres.  It is said that the boundless eucalyptus down there exude those particles and made the blue scene people see surround the mountains and valleys in blue mountain area. It's the scene you'll never to get in Taiwan, so I'm happy that I got a hitch to be there. Just the wind on top is blowing all the time and I would guess the summer time visit is a smart option. The weather today on the top is fickle, sometimes so windy that you get your ears frozen and hair so massy that you don't want people to look at your photos, sometimes compunded with drizzles so the dark cloud covered the sun and gone with blue sky. There're three made for tourism rides available to give it a spice on the blue mountain tour, railway, cable car and skycar. The ticket for unlimited experiences are 42 AUD (expensive), so we chose only railway and cable car rides, 21 AUD per person (not cheap for any transport in AU). Railway is steep and cable car claimed can take in as many as 84 people per ride. Worth a try for either ride, you're here after all.

20120906 Day 3 of being a housekeeper

Day 3, we're earning more with around 65 AUD per person for 2 check out room and 8 daily services. I prefer daily services honestly because it took less time and less effort and still can amount to the same amount as long as we do it efficiently and precisely. The manager had a pep talk to us when we're finished. We all knew things are always hard at the start and we'll get used to it and earn more with the curve. Just I would still hope we could end up with a decent job with hourly pay as fair as 19 AUD and worked for 8 hours per day. Davy, Franka and Jessie got such jobs working in a clothing facotry and I just heard that the weekend load can get 26 AUD per hour, what a envy job they got. I'll enroll work and travel agent the first thing after my duty tomorrow, haha. Even if I could finish my check out room within 40 or 50 mins which hardly can be mangaed is hardly comparable to their jobs, per my calculation. We did send out our application to berry exchange but I think it's a long shot and I don't even sure when we could be on the list. My plan now might will be to stay in Sydney for a while and try to get a stable job from work & travel. I could feel both my hands are extremely dry to a point that my finger tip are so sensitive that it's painful to even grope something out from my bag. My thigh and ankle are sore + aching and my waist is stiff. How could I be a glamor and grace woman if with those coarse hands and swollen calves. Though, it's good for Michael to learn to work with foreigners and listening to english. It's interesting to see how he handle the parts of language he felt difficault to understand. It's so true that he doesn't really to understand everthing to do his job well and that's how he got his praise when our supervisor Shamim told Michael's doing perfect for his room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the bed and that's a bit surprise to me to hear Shamim to say I could learn from Michael. I'm glad to know that Michael is doing just fine. We won 100 AUD in the star today again, haha, and going to casino is not what I see myself doing when I planned the AU trip.

  

20120905 Day 2 in Oaks Darling Harbour

Day 2 in oaks is the first day we run the room on our own and I started to help with Michael's room because I don't have any room check out yet before 10:00am. We tried to clean everything which we realized that it is the reason slow us down; instead, we should go through the dirty places first and decided the process that normally goes with garbage --> kitchen dirty trays cleaning --> bathroom chemical spray ---> Bed Making --> Wipe everything dust free --> and go back with bathroom finish --> vacuum at the last. The first room took us over 2 hours to complete so you know we earn less than a waitress in Chinese restaurant. @@ I think the best part about this job is to leave off work still have plenty of time feel the sun and see the sun goes down. I met about 4 or 5 Taiwanese working here and I later knew that only one of them worked here over 1.5 month and she told me that none of them are from Taiwan but mostly Korean when she first came in. The Korean here seem nice and they seem knew more english than Michael does, haha. There is this one girl named Miranda trained with us the first day and she seem nice, polite and well-educated. The supervisors and managers here are all nice, well-tempered, helpful and working ethically. As far as I can see now, they're mostly from India and two of them whom I asked are from Bangladesh. My guess is that Indians arrived in Australia much earlier than some other ethnic, so they took the helm earlier than the rest of us (meaning us from Korea, Taiwan or other Asian regions.) The housekeeping job isn't a easy thing to manage, especially for the physical learning and the hours we work for penny pay. Hard job, I could say. This day, we only made less than 45 AUD per person for doing 2 check out room and 2 daily service in almost 6 to 7 hours working straight. And, with my leg sour and rubbed hands all I could feel is tiredness of my body. Still, we headed to the casino winning some chips compensating our loss for the uneven pay of being a housekeeper.

20120904 Housekeeper 1st Day

I'm glad that I didn't end up being late to my first job opportunity in Australia. The job is housekeeping which I later found out is not an easy way to earn money and not an easy job to do. Get up at 6:00 am and off duty at around 4:00Pm, the official working hour starts at 8:00AM, so the total working hour is 6-7 hours and I got the pay for around 70 AUD. It's below my expectation but it's at least a start to earn some money. The job isn't easy because there're a lot of details to attend to and everything in the room should be dusted, scrubbed and there're chemicals that hurt my hand and maybe my lung. Michael's feeling the sour in his legs for standing so many hours and with his empty stomach. I think he understood maybe 50-60% english of the trainer who is an Indian and who is nice and working hard. Even the trainer noticed Michael looked confused at times and he must have noticed Michael's poor english. I couldn't help thinking it might be the wrong choice but I think we better hang on this job before there's a good options that with legal minimum hour rate for us. There're many Koreans and Indians working for the housekeeping company. We later went on to The Star and won 60 AUD before heading home. Monkey and Lynn invited us for thick corn soup.

20120903 Fish Market, The Star, Post Office

We wrote our postcards to friends this morning and went to Sydney fish market at the time it's about to close so we are left with fish packs that fried hours ago, which isn't that delicious. The view in fish market is fantastic just like we saw in the movies and the sea gulls are ferocious on seeking the chances to pick up leftover from humans. I'll still like to going back for the view and maybe the seafood when having some money. Later we went to "The Star" again even after the big fight on the way to fish market (all because Michael did't do his job well and we end up with buying my trail instead of my multi so we have to walk to everywhere, not taking the light tram that we hope to hop on.) We earned 40 AUD today. On the way home, there's another fight because I found out that there's no water left for me. I went to bed around 10 something PM and not talking to Michael. Next morning I'll have to show up for housekeeping job before 8:00 in darling harbour, so early and my first job here in AU. 

20120901 Manly Beach (Darling Fireworks)

We went to Manly beach today with Grace who we met one week ago in Mike's sharehouse and who we went to see Oaks housekeeping manager Shadnam the other day. The ferry to Manly is a big boat because it's kinda a really popular tourism detstination for OZ. The area around Manly beach is well developed and with shops open for toursim. However, the wind around Manly is still bothering me and it's cold when the sun is faded for heavy clouds. Grace felt the same discomfort. I caught minor flu the day after and felt weak. Still, I do like to come back when it turns summer. The drizzle made it frozen at night. Then we went to "The Star" again and show Grace the game Baccarat. She's interested in the way and chances of winning and possible formula and even made the notes like Cantonese to make some predictions. Michael earned 35 AUD then gave it back and ended up with 5 AUD winning bets only. We later went to Darling Harbour for the fireworks again. Back home, there're 4 new people checking in Mike's sharehouse just today. We met them the next morning, Monkey + Lin & Janet + Amber. Lin and Monkey have few stories to tell (mostly about Farm) because they already stayed in OZ for 9 months. 5 mothhs of 9 spent in Culbuture (卡布丘) of Brisbane for strawberry picking. It is said that 1000 AUD can be earned during peak season. So tempting that I really like to go try farm immediately!! M+L next stop will be to Young for Cherries.