Day 145 - February 14

Worked my second shift at AMF. Learned how to make the different types of coffee: Cappuccino, latte, flat white, short black, long black, Mochachino. Only a 3 hour shift again. Read more manuals and procedures. At least this company helps you thoroughly with any situations that may happen.

Came home after work. Nick went to the mailbox with BBQ tongs and spider spray, there were 2 redback spiders in our mailbox.

Another round of Wikipedia: The redback spider is a dangerous spider endemic to Australia. It is a member of the genus Latrodectus, the widow spiders, which are found throughout the world. The female has a black body with red stripe on the upper side (the back) of her abdomen. Females have a body length of a centimetre while the male is smaller, being only 3 to 4 millimetres long. The redback spider is one of few arachnids which usually display sexual cannibalism while mating.

Redbacks are considered one of the most dangerous species of spider in Australia. The redback spider has a neurotoxic venom that is toxic to humans with bites causing severe pain, often for over 24 hours.

My housemate Cait wanted to have an Evil Dead marathon. I joined her. We made it through the first 2 movies. We didn't watch the third one.

Day 144 - February 13

Worked my first shift for 3 hours at AMF. Sharon, the other worker in the cafe, and Kylie, the F&B manager, taught me how to use the till. I was mostly shadowing Sharon on what she was doing. I also did a lot of reading of the companies manuals and procedures. They have a lot to go through. Everything was pretty straight forward though. The 3 hours flew by and I was done before I knew it. The crappy thing is that I have 5 more of these 3 hour shifts before I can actually be considered full time. It was company policy.

My position is in the cafe. Here I would be making coffees, serving alcohol, and making food, such as hamburgers, hot dogs, nachos etc. With the burgers, they come with lettuce, tomato, grilled onions and a slice of beetroot. Australians love their beetroot. They also don't like eating raw onions like Canadians do. It has to be cooked. Also, they call burger fixings 'salad'. For example, they would order a hamburger and ask for salad inside the burger.  

Day 143 - February 12

Went bike riding for a couple of hours. Thought a lot about life. There's something about just riding a bike by yourself. Time slows, almost like someone pressed paused on the remote of life. There's nothing but the wind and your own thoughts. You start thinking about things you would never have thought about on a regular day. I even had thoughts about grade 9 for some reason. But I've also had time to think about the present. Mostly about where I'm at, what do I want out of life, what have I done to get where I'm at, my relationships with family and friends.

I challange all those that read this to try it out. Go for an hour bike ride with no music. I find that night fall has a better effect on thinking for me. Day time may work better for you. Also, ride in areas that are not busy with people, cars, or office buildings. The less going on around you, the better.

Day 142 - February 11

Woke up and still felt full. Gotta learn some self control when it comes to food. I can't help it. I love food!!

Went to the bowling alley to do my paper work. After that was done, I went to the mall for lunch. Had good old greasy KFC. Kinda still felt full from last nights dinner though.
I headed down to Jenn and Pauls new place in East Perth. They lived in apartment with another couple, a Japanese girl and a Brazilian guy. The building also had a pool and work out gym.

Jenn made turkey ball vindaloo for dinner. It was really good. Paul can't handle spicy. I was watching him sweat. He didn't even know it was a spicy dish. He figured out why he was sweating after I told him it's vindaloo sauce.

After dinner we headed to the official opening of the Perth Festival. It was a bunch of white clowns on high wires going back and forth from building to building releasing feathers into the air. The whole street was closed down for this. When it was all done, we had a feather fight. There were so many feathers on the street, it looked like snow.

This street was a couple of blocks from where it all happened.

Went back to Jenns and played some Donkey Kong Country on my SNES emulator. Good times, good times.

Day 141 - February 10

Went for the interview at 'The Partisan' restaurant in East Perth. Met Dylan, one of the owners. He was super nice. The interview went well. His girlfriend was also from Canada. Maybe he had a soft spot for Canadians and that's why he was quick to call me. He asked me to come back at 6:00pm for a trial and I agreed.

Since I didn't have to come back till 6:00, I went to check out the Perth Art Gallery. Entry was free. I like free stuff! Saw some work that I liked.

This is called the Automated Colour Field by Rebecca Baumann. Baumann's kinetic sculptures are concerned with the relationship between colour and emotion for which she has researched into psychology, sociology and colour theory. She often uses ordinary found, low-tech machines which energise the moment when an experience is changed. The work consists of a structural grid of 100 split-panel, battery operated clockes, each with the number cards replaced with cards of solid colour, yellow, red, blue, green. The cards flip on the minutes and the hour, revealing endless combinations of the colour palette. The work can also be read as a diagram of emotions and the clocks as an extension of the role of chance and time in both the artist's work and our lives.

I liked how it's always changing and, as the desciption above, how there are endless combinations.

Suspended Stone Circle by Ken Unsworth

This is one of a series of suspension installations in both sculpture and performance begun from drawings by the artist during the 1970s to explore the physical and spiritual properties of natural materials, their innner forces and energies. Unsworth's signature smooth river stones, collected by himself and hung improbably by wire from poles, hover just about the ground in a circular formation and embody his avowed preference for 'making art that is timeless or ancient'. The stones - smoothed and shaped by time and held by lines that suggest drawing in space - defy gravity and their origin, to create a sculpture about equilibrium, balance and formal relations that is suspended between the material and immaterial worlds. Systematically structured but perceptually equivocal, the work seems to be both weightless and weighty, both arrested yet in contained motion.

I liked it cause it looks cool.

A couple of my other favorites...

Big Red Square - Erich Buchholz

Abstract - Frank Hinder

The Butterfly - Freda Robertshaw

Assassin - Albert Tucker

The Short Street - John Brack

Pastoral Symphony - Blamire Young

Early Morning - Florence Fuller

Snow Scene, Valmondois - Charles Daubigny

Bride Of The North - Tarryn Gill

All by Helen Taylor

Stick - David Shrigley

The End - Tom Gibbons

It's a stick with eyes and they call it art. Maybe I'll just put poo on a stick and call that art.
When I got home, AMF called and told me that I got the job! I told Judieth that I was going to a trial at a restaurant and she replied 'Well now I've saved you from going to that trial!'. It felt great to get that job. They said I would start casual then get more hours as my performance increases.

I decided to go to the restaurant trial anyways. I thought maybe I could work both until I would be full time at the bowling alley. Nic, my housemate, was home and he was headed to the horse track which was a couple of blocks from the restaurant, so he gave me a ride down there.

I was about 30 mins early so I went for a coffee. As I was having coffee, I was contemplating if I should bother doing the trial and work at the restaurant. After 10 minutes, I made up my mind. I went to talk to Dylan. I told him that I got the job at AMF bowling. I said that since it's just down the street from my place, it made more sense to work there and that I would try it out. If it didn't work out, I told him I would crawl back to him and see if he still wanted me to work at his restaurant. He said 'deal' and thanked me for my honesty. I was also thinking that since AMF is a business chain, wherever I moved next, would most likely have an AMF and I could just transfer and get a job right away.

I went grocery shopping and bought items to make spicy butter chicken.

It took me about an hour to make it all. I was really hungry while making dinner. I ate 2 bowls, 1 bowl too many. About 5 hours later when I went to bed, I still felt full...

Day 140 - February 9

I looked online for some USB controllers for my laptop. I recently downloaded a NES and SNES emulator. When I went to pick up controllers that I found on gumtree I tested it out. It didn't work and the guy wasn't sure why. He said just to take it. What a nice guy. It actually ended up working after I configured it correctly.

I applied at the Levis store for assistant manager at Harbour Town (there's basically a Harbour Town shopping centre in every major city, not sure about the smaller cities. It's an outdoor mall with a mix of outlet and regular stores).

I spoke to the manager and got along really well. We talked about how I used to work at the Levis store in Chinook Mall. The only set back was that they were looking for someone for the long haul, not a couple of months. 

The manager called me back from a restaurant that I applied to online, The Partisan. He asked me to come in the next day for an interview.

Day 139 - February 8

Didn't do much today. Stayed home and made sweet and sour pork for dinner. It tastes a lot better when the pork is deep fried though.