Nasty Creatures (the land and sea variety)

I’ve been working in the hostel café for about 5 days now, and I have to say I absolutely dread going in for work. I don’t mind cleaning in the least, but you can only wipe down tables, walls, shelves, etc so many times before you actually start to wear the metal down from constant scrubbing. There’s so little to do in there, and when it’s slow, I’m convinced the clock actually follows suit and runs slower. Sometimes, I’m tempted to dump the contents of the salt and pepper shakers into the grass so I can kill some time refilling the empty containers. It’s not only the boredom, it’s having also to deal with 2 rather unpleasant women who call me out every time they see me standing around looking for something to do and ask, rather derisively, if I’ve “checked the list.” Um, actually, I CLEANED the list. So yesterday, a few minutes after my shift had ended, I was making myself some food and one of the women pushed an order towards me to run it out to a table. Normally I would have dropped what I was doing and run the food out just to be helpful, but something in me snapped and I just looked at the clock and shrugged my shoulders. She didn’t like that too much, but there wasn’t much she could do about it other than to say some nasty things about me to the other woman and get on with her work.

It strange that after all the time I spent living in NY, I still have trouble fighting fire with fire. My first instinct is always to be nice and ever helpful when I’m in the workplace, but niceties weren’t buying me any attitude shifts on their part, so, against my natural inclination to want to help, I opted to push back. We’ll see what happens. It does really pay to have a job here, in that you get meals, accommodation, and steep discounts on internet and board rentals, and drinks, but I’m not sure it’s worth feeling like I’m constantly fighting to keep in check the imminent loss of my temper.

Other that that little glitch, my situation here is actually pretty sweet. I somehow managed to score myself a virtually private bedroom. It’s connected to the main staff room here, and one of the girls left and no one wanted it, so I jumped at the chance to be able to actually close a door and have some precious privacy. I can’t believe my luck… oh to be able to actually change my clothes without a towel wrapped around me! To be able to close a door and stifle the bleeping of the much-used Xbox! It’s the little things in life. The other plus side is that my fellow work-for-accommodation travelers are really cool. We all hang out together and it’s getting to be a comfortable little family. Also, I don’t want to jinx it, but I may be able to get a photography job at the surf school here. I’m going to harass them until they have no choice but to let me have the job, but as a plan B, I’ve dropped my revamped and totally fabricated resume off at various bars around the area just in case the job doesn’t come through early next week. I went through a funny process when it came to redoing my resume in giving the bar/waitressing work I did when I was younger more prominence than the design work that has defined the last 5 years of my life. It felt so weird, but at the same time, it made me realize that work really does not define who we are… that at the end of the day none of that stuff matters all that much. Work is work, money is money, and it’s all part of the experience of being here to do whatever it takes to fully invest oneself in the day-to-day life of a place (though that does not include allowing myself to be talked down to as if I were a child in need of a remrimand…)

In other news, I took a surfboard out the other day and was all excited to get out on the waves. I noticed that there were very few surfers out and that the waves were also pretty flat. As I approached the beach, I saw why the ocean was practically bereft of surfers. Bluebottles. Nasty little blue jellyfish that come in according to certain wind patterns. They were everywhere, lying in clumps on the water’s edge and looking highly menacing. I was so annoyed that I hadn’t though to find out about the little monsters before I came out that day, and even more annoyed that I had lugged an overly large board out with me all the way to the far beach. I saw that there were a few surfers in the water (maybe 3 or 4) and I asked if they’d been stung yet and they said no, so I figured I’d give it a go. (Bluebottles won’t kill you, even though they do apparently hurt a hell of a lot). Well, it took all of 10 minutes for me to get stung. The tail end of a bluebottle wrapped itself around my waist and my leg. Then it got itself caught in my surfboard and I couldn’t get away from it, so it got me even worse. Fun times! I hightailed it back to shore to assess the damage. Eh, it was pretty painful and was leaving very strange welts that looked like strings of pearls embedded under my skin. I’d liken the pain to a bee sting. Not screaming, white hot pain, but enough to make me never want to get near the water’s edge when there are jellyfish in sight ever again. Sometimes, I just have to tempt fate, and then I pay the price! Later that day, I went for a run and was doing crunches in the grass when I felt a deep, burning sensation in my shoulder. My crunches seemed to have blocked the path of a wayward red ant. OUCH. I think it’s safe to say the pain was actually worse than the jellyfish sting. I had to laugh though…I mean, what next? A shark? (I really shouldn’t joke about that, there are sharks around here).

Anyway, that’s about as exciting as it gets at the moment. In a few more days I’ll have some idea about how I’ll be spending my next few months. If the job comes though, I’ll be here for about one or two months, and if not, then I’ll just peace out and finish my trip up the coast before settling down in Sydney for a while to do some design work. I’m starting to miss it!