Fired Guy

Hello everyone in blogger land. Brian here. I have a couple things to go through on this post. We have Halloween and the weekend, the Melbourne cup, the election, and the job situation for yours truly.

Halloween

First off the four of us had a nice little weekend. A lot of people have asked about if there is Halloween down under. There is, kind of. Going out during the day you couldn't tell that it was Halloween. I am used to spooky decorations being everywhere and there was none of that. I saw a couple masks throughout the day but besides that there weren't any real ghosts or ghouls costumes out and about during the day. Later that night we went out dressed as ourselves to a bar that was having a halloween party. About half of the people there were dressed up. We had a nice little time dancing around and having fun. But overall, I felt like Australia treated Halloween like the states treat St Patty's Day. People dress up in a bit of green and there are a few decorations around but for the most part it isn't really a full blown event.

Melbourne Cup

The Melbourne Cup is pretty much the biggest horse race of the year out here in Oz and took place yesterday Nov. 4. Pretty much the whole country shut down for about half an hour to watch. We went into Sydney to find a fun place to partake in the festivities. A huge big screen was set up outside Martin Place in downtown Sydney. We sat down in front of the big screen with a few hundred other sydneysiders and watched the horses and jockeys get introduced. Immediately we became fans of horses with ferocious names such as Zipping, Barbaricus, and especially Ice Chariot. Septimus and Mad Rush were two of the favorites but in the end it was Viewed inching out Bauer by a nose in a photo finish. What a race! Definitely kind of anticlimactic when they all galloped over the finish line and we all had to wait for the photo finish analysis to announce the winner. Personally I was glad I didn't bet on the race because I can safely say I would never have put money on a name so boring as Viewed. All in all it was a lot of fun. Its cool to see people get so excited about random things like a horse race.

OBAMA

Today is election day as well and Obama has just been announced as our new President! I am a little surprised by the large amount of interest out here in Australia. If someone asked me, never in my life could I tell you when an election was taking place in another country while at home, but out here when people learn I am American they never fail to ask me what I think about our election. I took a nice little jog around the block right after Obama's speech and some lady was taking out the trash and asking her neighbor if she saw who the new American President is. I could only smile as I ran by. The television coverage of the election was also excellent. All day we have had access to cnn and msnbc's coverage of the show and it has really been nice to hear American accents analyze everything that went on. Earlier in the day we only had regis/kathyesque morning shows on tv. They all made passing references to the election and then spending the majority of their time talking up some sort of ziffer mop that moistens and dries your floor all at the same time! When they finally focused on the election they decided to run a 5 minute montage on all the blunders American presidents have made over the years. 4 and a half minutes of the piece was centered on Bush and Clinton. I could only shake my head at Australian TV.

Fired Guy

On to the job front for me. It turns out things weren't working out with me and Sahnia's restaurant in Bondi, though no one officially told me until today. Erin was talking to management on Sunday about her work schedule and it came up that things weren't working out with me and waitering at that establishment. This was all news to me when she later relayed the story to me. I waited and tried to contact the owner for a couple days before having to physically walk down to the restaurant to get the owner to talk to me. By that time I was almost relieved to learn I was fired because I was sick of sitting around and wondering. Over the last couple days I have been really frustrated with getting fired. Getting rejected with something I put my whole self into has not happened often for me. I remember in 5th grade I got denied from getting promoted to the major league division of the Thousand Oaks Little League even after I domoed the tryouts with impeccable execution of every part of the process including multiple homeruns in the batting portion. I was devastated being denied.

I just finished another book, a biography of pitcher extraordinaire Sandy Koufax. Something that really caught my attention was how Sandy stressed the importance of being grateful for any opportunity you may receive. He mentioned how other baseball players felt entitled to a chance to play in the majors. Sandy said you should only feel lucky and fortunate for an amazing opportunity like that. That is the mindset I am trying to keep right now on this whole situation. I think back to my little league experience and realize how lucky I was to have that incredible program to participate with in the first place. I am enjoying my time over at Elvis Pizza and I should be able to get by for a while with just that one job even though I only work about 9 hours a week there. I still haven't seen an actual Elvis show though so it still feels like I haven't quite been initiated as an employee there yet. Hopefully that right of passage happens soon.

Anyways thats it for me, Blindy. I also want to shout out to Plaw as one of the newest readers. It's always great to see new faces on the blog. Not that I don't appreciate the old faces because I do. Patrick, we all down in Aussieland want to hear what you are up to these days. We miss you and we miss everyone else holding down the fort back in America.

B “we have internet in our house again so we can talk to everyone more often” Lindy

and of course the discussion of the last Office is here. Also, Garrett I'm interested in how Fringe is shaping up. I watched the first couple episodes before I left the country and it seemed mildly amusing and a barely acceptable substitute for when LOST isn't on. I might have to download some more episodes online if you think its worthwile.

The Office: Employee Transfer

Didn't like it at all. Really poor episode in general. I don't understand the Jim/Pam story lines recently. We don't know Jim's brothers and they weren't funny. Jim and Pam barely interacted. I don't know what they are trying to do with those two these days. How does Jim defending Pam advance that story line at all? I think we already know he would do that is totally committed to her. I felt the same about the Dwight/Andy feud. I realize D is trying to bother Andy, but I don't understand how that will help him win Angela back. Can someone explain how acting like an idiot and pretending to go to Cornell or pretending to be a Beet farmer will get you closer to winning over the girl? It doens't make any sense to me. Finally Michael and Holly and Darryl was amusing and sad. Singing the blues at the end was the highlight of the episode. I don't want Holly to leave and hope they bring her back. So mostly I am just really confused about what they were doing with this episode. If they are just trying to advance story lines so there can be some sort of ultimate confrontation with Dwight/Andy or some big moment with Jim/Pam then fine. But I don't understand where they are going with this and they didn't make it that funny.