Day 163 - March 3

Started my shift with Josh. He says that saturday mornings are always busy because of the mentally disabled league. He was right. We had a lineup in front of the cafe for about an hour. There were coffee orders and food orders and only 2 of us in the cafe. We needed 3 people: 1 to take orders and payment, 1 to make coffees and 1 in the kitchen to make the food. It was a bit difficult with 2.

Dhiren, from England, came in at 11:00am and that really helped us out. I was also telling him that Josh was freakin out and he said that's just how Josh is haha.
Once it died down a bit, I practiced on my latte art.

I decided that I would ride my bike as much as I can from now on. After my shift at AMF I rode to Outback Jacks instead of taking the bus. Took about 45 minutes. It just sucks that it's so hot and I'm wearing a backpack that my back becomes sweaty.

I started work at Outback Jacks at 6:00pm. By about 7:00pm, there was about 7 of us working. Ashley, the manager, had 2 people come in for trials. I trained 1 of them, Ellie. She didn't need too much training as she's served before. She just needed to practice on which dishes come with extras and stuff. Most of the dishes come with a choice of chips (french fries), mashed or baked potato.

Ash, one of the AMF maintenance guys, and his friend came in. The day before I told him he should come in and visit me at Outback Jacks. He was telling me about AMF and how it's being reshaped by Judith, the current centre manager, and how it's pissing some people off. Ash is one of the few cool people at work. He's nice to everyone and does his job. Something so simple, but yet not everyone is capable of doing that at AMF.

Ash's friend also worked with AMF but at the Rockingham location. I was asking him if it's possible to get a bowling ball. He said for sure. Brand new too. I was joking since there's no way I'd be able to take that on a plane and my own stuff. I'd be way over the limit. Then he said he would send it to my house in Canada. He would also add in a bowling pin. Super awesome!

I had a great bike ride back home. There's something about riding a bike down an empty street with few street lights and bright stars in the sky. Very relaxing and theraputic.

Day 162 - March 2

Had a very good work out in the morning which included a 2.5 km run. This time I didn't feel dizzy at all afterwards. Hooray for not being weak!

Worked at 3:00pm with Alec at AMF. He's 17 years old and seems a bit clumsy at times, but is a good kid and is funny about his own clumsiness. Dhiren came in at 5:00pm. The 3 of us made fun of each other the entire shift. It was awesome. The evening shift was also more fun as the clientele was a younger crowd and was easier to poke fun at. Who knew working at a bowling alley could be so much fun!

Day 161 - March 1

I missed a call at 11:30am from AMF to come in early since they had no one working in the cafe. I actually received the message at 2:00pm when I topped up (recharge) my sim card as my plan expired yesterday. You can go into a monthly contract with the cell phone company or do a pay-as-you-go. I went with Optus as that was the best plan fit for me. I bought a sim card with them then I buy a $30 recharge voucher for my sim card every month as it expires every 30 days or if I run out of minutes, whichever comes first. I never run out of minutes, since not a lot of people call me in Australia, but also because I picked a good plan. I also bought another SIM card with an overseas plan where it charges me $0.05 per minute. So if I call home, I switch to my long distance SIM card (which obviously has a different number as well).

Worked with Josh again. I was putting out some feelers as to see if he also cooks food for himself to eat or if he's a straight arrow and pays for everything (as we are supposed to). He also cooked food and ate it without paying. Sweet!

I made fries and chicken strips for myself for dinner. That would've regularly cost $8 for 3 chicken strips and a small batch of fries, but not for me! Now I can save on lunch/dinner money while I work here mwa haha.

Tiarna bought a nutella pizza from across the street and shared it with all of us. It was actually pretty good. The top and bottom crust was a thin layer of crusty pita bread with nutella in the middle. Good stuff.

Mmmmm... Nutella pizza....

Josh and Tiarna... keepin it real...

This was also my first closing shift, but it was pretty much the same thing as closing any restaurant: Clean dishes, restock food and drinks, mop floor, help yourself to a drink to take home heh heh heh.

Day 160 - February 29

Didn't have work today. Just lazed around at home.

Dave replaced the lightbulb socket while I supervised. I wanted to do it myself, but since he actually works in the trade business, better a professional do it. Also, when I went to buy the socket part at Bunnings (equivalent to Home Depot), I asked for help on if I had the right socket and if it was easy to replace it. The worker asked if I was an electrician. Obviously I am not. Then he replied that he can't tell me how to replace it as it is against the law. He says that only people trained in that profession can be told how to do it.

I guess this means that it is illegal for Western Australians to fix things in their own home unless they are trained to. Guess people aren't allowed to do their own home projects. That's too bad.

My badass $35 Jackaroo ride.

Day 159 - February 28

Worked the morning shift again. This time I was by myself. Then Judith, the manager, told me that they have a student that is on a work experience program and that I was to teach him what we do in the cafe area. His name was Glen. I taught him the basics of the cafe: making coffees, sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, etc. Easy stuff. He's a good kid. He thought I looked 20. Sweet, still got the asian youth. He has family all over the world: Canada, States, India, Australia. I told him that travelling the world will be easy for him because of that.

Sharon had an idea of making gravy yesterday but we didn't have time. I made it today. Then I made a poutine, which no one knows what it is. Not exactly the same as how Canadians do it, but it'll do for now. Made it with curly fries too.

Mmmmm substitute poutine....

It sucks being on as 'casual' staff because management can change our schedule and they don't check if it's okay with you. They changed it and it interfered with my Outback Jacks shifts. AMF changed it and gave me more hours, so I'll have to call Ashley and tell her that I can't come in for 2 days. That sucks. I don't like telling work that I can't come in, especially when I told her in advance that I could work those days. That's life in the hospitality business I guess.

DJ Brett took the bus up to Dianella, where I lived, and we went to watch Underworld: Awakening. The movie wasn't that great. It had some obvious plots in it and a lot of one liners. Afterwards we chilled back at my place where he met Dave. We talked for a bit. Brett's thinking of coming to Canada after he gets married, but before he has kids.

Brett also talked a lot about politics and the economy. He's in the import and export business so I think he has to be up to date with some of that stuff. Not my cup of tea for conversation, but I don't mind listening to some interesting things.

Day 158 - February 27

Just stayed home and relaxed. It was 30 degrees with no clouds outside. I had 3 fans going in the living room. Didn't really help since it was blowing hot air everywhere. My advice, if you decide to live/visit Perth, find a place with air conditioning.

Day 157 - February 26

One of Nick's friends, Dave, moved in. He is only staying for 3 weeks then going back to Christchurch, New Zealand. He moved because he couldn't stand his current house mates. They got a dog and just leave it on the balcony. They don't walk it.  Dave was saying it just runs in circles and barks. Stupid owners. They should have no right to owning a pet if they can't take care of it properly. The house mates also don't pay their bills on time and just keep racking up debt. Not a good sign.

He moved into my old room which has just double mattress and a wardrobe.

Went to work for 6:00pm. Worked with Emily, Angela and Ashley (the manager). By the time it was 8:30pm, it was just Ashley and I, team Canada. Though she is from Montreal, she had a mixed accent of Irish and Australian. Kinda weird. I think she might have picked up the Irish accent because there are A LOT of Irish people in Perth.

There was a drunk guy that came in and ordered a steak. When the food was ready, I think he stumbled out. This counts as a walk out and apparently it comes out of our tips. Plus our tips were split amongst all the workers. This sucks as I got a $10 tip from one person who said I gave them great service. $10 is like huge since they don't tip in Australia. What makes it worse is that the workers are trained to skip the tipping section on the credit card machine. We don't even give the customers the chance to tip if they wanted to. This super sucks! I might not skip that part for the customer next time and see what happens.

We kept the steak in the kitchen under the heat lamp, in case the drunk guy came back. He didn't. At the end of my shift, I split the steak with one of the kitchen people. Even though it was medium done, the steak was still soft. It tasted awesome!

I was done at 10:00pm and started walking to my bus stop by the State Library. While I was walking there, I texted to see what time my bus would be there. It's an awesome idea. Calgary should do that. All you have to do is text the transit number the bus stop number and it will text you back the next 10 buses that would arrive. I got a text back that said 'no buses are available at this time'. Ah crap! With no cash on me and only $8 in the bank, I walked.

Never been this broke before haha

Haven't seen a Baskin Robbins since I was a kid.

I google mapped the time it would take and it said 1.5 hours. No problem.

It actually wasn't that bad of a walk. I had my headphones in and walked the quiet streets of Perth while the weather was around 18 degrees.

Just missing my horse.

Day 156 - February 25

Woke up and drove to the main street for coffee. I didn't get any bites from the mosquitoes, but I can't say the same for Paul. The cafe we went to served a mega coffee - 9 shots of expresso!! That's crazy. For $25. Though the mug looked cool cause it was the size of my head.

We then went to a nearby park to have lunch. This park didn't have tables, only benches. We looked like bums when we busted out the camping stove and started BBQing wieners, it was awesome.

Bananas and sausage? Must be an Irish theme or something. Paul handled it very well.....

Sausage, egg, tomato, bun, plate, air, grass, sunshine, what more could you ask for.

One Ozzie passed by and smiled and said 'good on ya mate'.
 
After lunch, it was time for Jenn and pauls tattoo. Paul bought her a tattoo voucher for Xmas. She got snow flakes on her back with the phrase 'this too shall pass'. It looked pretty good.

Paul got one on the bottom of his wrist that had Celtic meaning to it. Something about bananas and sausages or something. I got the usual dragon fighting a tiger on my back, nothing too fancy. Pretty much all asians have these. But my mom will kill me if she sees it....... she doesn't like tigers.

After we were done tattoos, we set out for the Busselton jetty. This jetty is the second longest wooden one in the world. it's long enough that you have the option of taking the train or walking it to the end. We walked it and made it our bitch.

There were a lot of people fishing on it too. I wished we had time for that. We could've busted out the camping stove again on the jetty. Then Paul would probably add sausage and bananas to it or something.

Is it wrong that I wanted to run behind these people and push them in the water?

My GQ pose.

One of my favorite pictures I took. Would've been perfect if these people weren't in it....

One of my other favorite pictures I took. Would've been perfect if the stupid Jetty wasn't in the way...

 Afterwards we drove back to good ol boring Perth.

Day 155 - February 24

Paul drove Jenn and I to Busselton. It was about 3 hours out of Perth. Once we got there, we looked for a place to stay as our plans were to get up early and make the most of Busselton and to see the Jetty.

We arrived at a backpackers where there was a bunch of drunk people in the court yard that welcomed us. The office only had a room for 2 people. We left to look elsewhere.

While driving around, we got pulled over by cops and Paul had to do a breathalyzer. They saw him swerve a bit on the road, but it was only because we were looking around for hostels. He passed and we were on our way to find another place to stay.

We found a motel that charged $100 for a night stay. It wasn't too bad for a room that had a single and a double bed. Only crappy thing was that there were a lot of moquitoes in the room. Luckily they didn't think my blood was sweet, but they kept going after Paul.

Day 154 - February 23

Worked with Zack from 9am-2pm at AMF. I took peoples order while zack did the cooking in the back.

One elderly woman came up with her order of chicken salad and complained to zack that it's not what she wanted. She wanted fish and chips. We don't sell fish and chips. Zack said that she has complained many times before. She tries to get free stuff by complaining. Man o man.... the things people try and do to get free food.
 
Went bowling with Brett, Jenn and Paul for $3 a game. Fun stuff. First game we bowled I beat everyone with my score of 104. Not too bad since I haven't bowled for almost a year.  Second game I bowled, I did almost the same, but this time everyone else did better than me. I think Jenn and Paul were hustling Brett and I. Paul bowled 4 strikes in a row!

 The Irishman 

The Australian

The Canadian Chick

The Canadian Asian

Went back to my place for cake and ice cream. While everyone was here, I got Paul to help me move my bed into nick's old room, which was bigger.