And then things go pear shaped...

Things have gone from great to fucking abysmally bad.

Somewhere in the mix my credit card and possibly my cash card as well have been cloned.... got an email from my bank on Monday which prompted me to check my balance online only to find that my credit card has been over drawn by $250, which is a difference of around $800 from the last place I left it at. I made a call back home to number my bank had provided and was told that I should cancel my card, which I have, but then I went to go and use my cash card – the main one I have been using all the time over here but it only works in ATM’s – the cash card is saying that I have exceeded my limit which is its way of saying I have no money left.

FUCK is the only thing I could think of saying at the time

After too many phone calls I have an emergency replacement for my credit card coming along tomorrow which is good for the simple fact that this way I can pay for my current accommodation and the train ride back to Salzburg where hopefully I can earn enough money to cover at the very least my visit to Paris in march, the one set plan I have made is to meet up with Sam in Paris on the 4th and that is the only thing that is keeping me from cutting my losses and regearing my flight back to OZ a lot sooner .

The one thing that I’m not certain about yet is whether or not my cash card got cloned or not... I can’t get through to the service number that they provide and their internet service has been a stonewall for the last three days so I can’t even register for it let alone login. I get the feeling that if I’ve lost all of this on one card then chances are that both have been ripped off which is fucking annoying.

I’ve finally managed to talk to Dad though which is a massive relief, he’s going to sort out some money for me which is more than I could ask... I know for a fact that there isn’t anyone else in the family I could ask on this short notice.

I have been a hermit at the hostel for the last two days and then this one too, but with the phone call and the other stuff starting to look in the right direction it can only get better.... pity I have no money to even buy myself a beer... or some post cards to write.

But if nothing else I have free internet and a ton of movies I grabbed off someone a while back... time to waste another day, tomorrow will have to be a day of something at least...

And the random music selection today is something I saw on a German music channel, I know some people from back home aren’t into this scene, but some most certainly are....



"Ring Frei" by LaFee

... so a few words from me.

So I've finally managed to pull out that nice web cam of mine...



There's my little chat for now, you might have to turn it up after 20 seconds... I didn't get around to fixing the audio levels.

The random vid of the week is:



Eisblume - "Eisblumen"

first night

It’s around almost 7.30 Adelaide time and I’m about 3 hours out of Kuala Lumpur. The flight has had a chunk of turbulence but for the most part has been fairly uneventful. So far I’ve read my book for a bit, had a meal and then watched one movie and I’m about 20 minutes into the second.
Thoughts on the flight are reasonably positive. Staff are as distant as almost every single other flight attendant I’ve come across, the food was actually reasonable for a change and the fact that cocktails are free is fucking awesome – even if the range is distinctly limited.
Meh, another three hours and I’ll be on the ground in KL and I can hopefully post this by leaching some internet, if not... so what, just a bit of a delay.
The freaked-out –ness I’d been suffering from has worn thin to the point it’s gone essentially, now I’m just sticking to the fact that I’ve already come this far and it’s way too far to go home again. That’s made even better by the fact that I can really enjoy the super-fucking-excitedness – gotta love making up words – which I’m riding hi on a fair bit....but for now I’m going to get another free cocktail and watch the rest of this movie.

That was written on the plane and that has long since passed. Got to KL, got online, then got something to eat...twice, and after waiting and hating the humidity I got on the plane. The second plane ride was distinctly less full than the first, total of 4 out of 8 people so I had a giant chunk of space next to me which was a bonus I guess....lack of anyone to talk to but meh...this is me, ever the social person.
That flight was the fucking gay.
I ended up watching another 4 movies before it was late enough to consider sleep, which is better known as it was sleep time for Germany instead of Australia, I’d been up for over a day before I let myself doze of finally....god those seats are uncomfortable.... I’m kinda wishing that the fat Asian chick on the other end of my section wasn’t there so I could have lain across the entire thing, like many another person did around the plane. I think I managed to get around 5 hours of sleep on the thir-fucking-teen hour flight. All in all....so fucking boring it wasn’t funny, but nothing will beat the feeling of cold as I got off the plane onto the aero bridge and the 1 degree weather had seeped in a bit.... I really do love the cold.
Got into Frankfurt and after some confusing times with ATM’s and train tickets I got my ass to the hostel, its reasonably good I think, but I don’t have anything to compare it too I guess... give it time. The day has consisted of random walks and looking in stores and taking photo’s and shit. Discovered that I really need to buy some gloves and a beret, but I figured that was coming. Now I'm waiting for a few hours to pass so I can crash out at 10 pm-ish.

Tomorrow will involve some copious amounts of walking as I see the rest of the sights in this fair city before I move on to another...haven't figured out which yet....any suggestions?

oh...and it's 5.34pm local time and its already dark, and it's 3.04am Adelaide time, and I'm up to my 4th 2euro Becks.

A status updade

With the count down until I leave this fair country of mine rolling ever closer to that fateful day I know that I must place another status update into the system, even if I do doubt if I have very many followers at the moment.

I can say for a definitive fact that I now have my tickets and my passport. I have yet to officially acquire a job but my tentative contacts appear to be moving in the right direction which is a reasonable start.

The one main problem I have been having is a distinct lack of money... about three months ago we had a “management adjustment” which to all that actually live in the real world, unlike our CEO, is better known as the venue manager getting pole axed. Since that fateful event took place my hours dropped to a pitifully low amount, I was averaging 35 hours a week before the change, I dropped down to 15, which is barely enough to live on, let alone save the thousands that I intended to have before I leave.

Fortunately this is beginning to change back to the positive, I managed 35 hours the other week, and the week ending Sunday I managed to score my largest week to date – a Massive 56.25 hours, that is 10 hours more than I have ever managed to get before and is going to make my bank balance that little bit nicer.

Now comes for the fun bit, the description, my last week was a combination of bar shifts which are always fun....and for the most part preparation for a massive end of season/grand final celebration for a local sports team.

The entire inside bar was going to be a members area which could attract up to a thousand people if they all turned up, the outside section had four beer outlets and a wine/spirits station along with two pie/pasty/sausage roll van’s and a barbeque/ hot-chip outlet.
This is mostly shown in the picture below.

For all of these nice venues that we were putting on we got a little bit of alcohol and other drinks.
This is better known as:
_
• 7 entire pallets of beer, with a pallet holding about 80 cases and a case holding 30 cans

• 2 pallets of spirits, not certain on the numbers, but they were flat packs which held 24 each and there were at least 110 flat packs in all.

• An entire pallet of soft drink cans, 30 cases of Coke, 20 boxes of PowerAde, another 16 cases of other assorted other soft drinks.

• A separate pallet of water which was picked up from the supplier after the fact, which was a solid 60 cases.

• An additional 20 keg’s of our ranges of beer, on top of the roughly forty we had sitting spare already and the 17 already tapped into the system.

It should be noted that none of this includes the alcohol that we already had on premise which was quite significant.

But I was still kind of freaked out that I signed for about $50,000 - $70,000 worth of stock over the course of three days.

The big day came on Sunday and it was a long day for me, starting at 8 am after finishing a 10 hour day at 9 pm the night before. As per usual for a day like that all of the massive things had been done already so my morning jobs consisted primarily of small run around jobs that needed to be done, four hours later I was done for a while and had a break for an hour and a half. Upon returning I was quickly put to work with my offsider who is getting primed to take my job and we rearranged a couple of the outside venues and then moved the mobile cool rooms into place, after that (two hours later) we slowed down and took the chance to watch the game that was being televised, we WERE playing well at that point, we did some more run around and then they were playing like shit.

Then the fun times began as our external staff began to arrive and we had the joy of priming them on what to do that was specific to our venue. I took this time to go to MY canteen and get it ready to run, even if my staff were half an hour late. I delegated the role of cook to the first person to turn up and ran it from there as my staff quickly turned up over the next 15 minutes, only including one person who I had worked with before. Got them running and then I did what I had intended to do the entire time... I walked away to go do other stuff.

The night dragged on, the team lost and the ten thousand that we had catered for on the chance that they were going to win, turned into a fucking pathetic two and a half, we ended up closing half the external venues early. Eventually the major presentations and the bands had done their part and we closed all of the external venues sorted it the way we wanted and did what we could elsewhere....it was now 11.30 at night and the day was over. I got a stubby of beer and left, I had to be back at 8 am the next day –another day another dollar.
In all it was fucked, almost all of the beer was untouched and had to be brought back and unloaded today, I don’t even want to think about how bad the wages for the night was going to end up, while inside may have done a booming trade...the outside was a fucking joke and a money hole.

Glad I won’t be here if it happens again next year...

Tired and drained but still raring on.

-CJ