Thursday, November 20, 2008

Rain, Rain, go away

It is RAAAAAAINing outside right now… insanity rain. Big, thick, heavy, aggressive and wet drops of rain. I feel bad for Taylor. I got home an hour before the rain started, Taylor will probably get off work in the next 2 minutes and have to fjord the river home. Maybe try and float the wagon across.

Anyway, this is the Jess-ster. Living it up. Like I said I just got back from work a little while ago. Work was good tonight, I waited tables on the bar floor today (Lina took the back section, I took the front). Once again I learned a lot and had a pretty good time. It’s fun to stay busy and there’s almost always something to do. The tips weren’t as good at the bar level, but that’s mostly because people normally just get a couple of beers and pay for them right away. There isn’t as much service involved. Also there weren’t near as many people on a Wednesday night as on a Friday night – so I’m looking forward to hopefully working downstairs in the restaurant on the busier nights so I can bring home the cheddar.

Since I blogged last – hold that thought… There was just a monster lightning/thunder combo. It had to have been the tree out front or something because the thunder came instantly after the lightning, the house shook. Awesome – ok continuing… Since last time, we had a nice little day on Tuesday. I went for a run and made some delicious dinner. I bought a couple different kinds of kangaroo meat at the store the other day and we tried them out Tuesday night for the first time. Kangaroo sausages, which have a tasty little zip of some sort to them, and Kangaroo mince were the two types I bought. Sausage sandwiches are easy enough, but I really enjoyed grilling the mince up with some spices and mixing that into a little pasta sauce and veggies to make a tasty meaty pasta sauce. Throw that over some pasta and there ya go! I’m not positive on the health benefits of kangaroo meat, but I do know it is better for Australia and for me than eating cows. You see, kangaroos rarely, if ever, fart. Cows, on the other hand, are almost constantly farting. They create something like 15-20% of Australia’s methane. It sounds like I’d have to make that up, but I’m not. Kangaroo meat is fairly lean and has tons of Iron, so I’m sticking with it for the time being.

Tuesday night we went Salsa dancing and brought along eMay’s friend, Dianna. She was nice, a little quiet and hesitant to dance at first, but that’s understandable when somebody like me is out there tearing it up. We had fun and after a couple hours Lindy got off work and joined the crew (Taylor had to work late again). Dianna has an Australian boyfriend and a buncha US friends who we’re going to hang out with this weekend. Fun stuff.

Today we saw 007, Quantam of Solace. If you haven’t seen it yet, James Bond dies! No, come on now, be reasonable. He doesn’t die… well maybe he does. Just go see it. It is so exciting and intense, and there are about a hundred more chases in this one than the last one (car chases, boat chases, plane, foot, etc). It was quite a spectacle. The end left me wanting a little more, but that’s good because I’ll definitely go see the next one.

Word to your father.

Shout out to Daddy Dick tonight… Dad, your comments always make me laugh, I love reading the US/Aus lingo and is there a manheim auto auction in Sydney? Because maybe you could come out here and buy a car for us… we could really use one at times. Good luck selling the Trailblazer, I’m sure it’ll go quick if you’ve got anything to do with it.

That’s it for now.

Jesse “ready for the sun” Meredith

Monday, November 17, 2008

Queso en en Banco

What’s happening folks? I’ll tell ya what’s happening here… crummy weather. I feel like I’m in Lancaster, PA in October except none of the trees are turning orange and losing their leaves. It’s been only about 65 for the past few days here and gloomy looking at best. Once in a while the sun peeks out for a second to say hello, but then it’s right back where it came from, behind the clouds. Luckily it hasn’t been raining all that much (or really at all) and it’s supposed to get to be warmer starting at the end of this week and into next week. That’s when summer will ideally kick-off and we’ll be in what I like to call ‘Real Australia’ rather than ‘Actually real Australia’. Because in my mind, ‘Real Australia’ is always sunny and warm and the waves are big and friendly and warm and wonderful. Give it a couple weeks.

Alright so my job is pretty cool. I like the people I work with for the most part and I get paid fairly well. I worked a split shift on Friday starting at noon and ending around 11pm. The first 3 ½ hours I was just running food/drinks and bussing tables. It was super busy and a bit hectic, but enjoyable nonetheless. Easy peezy job for me… Then I had an hour or so break before I had to be back for the real fun. Sean (my manager) informed me that I’d be ‘taking the downstairs’ with Samson shadowing me, which meant I got to wait on people finally. Samson said he’d take the two monster tables of people that were supposed to come in (and I’m glad he did) because they ended up being real doozies. The one table he did (with 20 people) was nice enough, but when they food came out everyone forgot what they had ordered and so they had to keep passing the dishes back and forth until it all got figured out. The other table he did (10 people) was a group of Asians that, for the most part, struggled with English and, on the whole, struggled with tipping. I didn’t have to deal with them, however, except to bring them some food and clear their table.

All of the people on my tables ended up being much nicer, friendlier, simpler, and in a few cases, drunker. I took care of one larger party (8 or 10) people that were seeing their Canadian friends off and all of them ordered steins of beer (1 liter each), which cost ~$20. 2 or 3 hours and $400 later they were outta there and I was $30 richer, which is pretty fantastic considering nobody in Australia is supposed to tip. I must have gotten lucky, however, as I was able to rake in a pretty decent pull of tips on the night. Overall it was a fun and different experience and although I’m nowhere close to being sure of what I’m doing completely, I’m moving in the right direction. I work Wednesday – Saturday this week. I’m scheduled for 24 total hours, which is 8 more than last week so that’s gotta be a good sign.

Let’s see what else is going on… Well on Saturday we all had a kind of lazy day again around the house. We did some cleaning and picking up of trash and whatnot before going out to a semi-fun little bar with some people from my work. We all went over to Anna and Lina’s house (two girls I work with) before heading to the bar in Bondi. The dance floor was sub-par and the DJ was even worse, but I got a couple dance moves in before getting tired and heading home.

Erin and I went to church Sunday night and it was a nice service. It was much shorter this week and they added a bongo-playing dude for 2 of the songs. I think he must have been the Pastor’s nephew looking for a gig or something because he was not too good. He didn’t play the bongos for the last song, however, which was perfect because it was one of my favorites. After the service we went to a BBQ at Big Ben’s house (the pastor) and ate all sorts of delicious food. They made beef kebabs, salad, some sort of rice salad dish, and some sort of chick pea salad dish… all of which were far superior to anything I’ve been cooking up lately. Tim, this sweet dude I met the first night of church and who was in the bible study we went to, gave us a ride to the BBQ and back to our house afterwards. He is a baller. He is such a nice guy and his wife is awesome and their house was so cuters (that’s where the bible study was) and they made chocolate covered strawberries. These people are so nice to us. Also we met an American dude at church named Jay. He’s a nice enough guy but I think he’s a bit peeved at us because he was the token American at church. Now we are there and since we are newer everyone wants to hear our accent over his. HA, tough luck Jay!

Today Lindy, T, and myself went to Watson’s bay and walked around this national park thingy called Gap Park. The pictures below are a shot of what we saw and also the general gloomy weather we’ve been dealing with.




Last night I spent 2-3 hours researching fun things we need to do over the next couple weeks and I am excited to say I’ve found quite a few over the next couple weeks/months/etc. Tomorrow night we are going to a free salsa lesson. Following the lesson is a Latin Salsa party that supposedly rages on all night. We’ll all be salsa experts by then so it should be fun. Lindy will show up late because he works until 9 or so and T probably won’t make it because he works until his shoes wear through (he works in a sweatshop from 4am to 2am and sleeps for an hour or so in between days). Erin has made a nice friend called Dianna, but none of us are sure yet if she is real, imaginary, or some sort of halfsies. We’ll see tomorrow as Erin claims she’ll be joining us for Salsa. We’re going to see a comedian for my birthday in a couple weeks (I found him during my research time) and I’m psyched for that. He’s a funny dude based on the youtube clips I watched of his and he’s performing at the Opera House, so how cool is that? I’ll fill you in on other things we’ll be doing as they come up, but for now as a taste I’ll inform you that they include, but are not limited to… Billy Joel in concert, Monday night poker at the University center, secondhand jean/leather jacket market at Kings Cross, Bob Dylan’s art on exhibition, betting on crab racing, giving blood to Australian Red Cross… get excited for updates.

Shout it out…

Garrett – thanks for the e-mail filling me in on all the happenings at Stanford right now. I think that I speak for all of the rescuers (so basically just me and Lindberg as of late… or as of ever… but hopefully that’ll change) in saying that I want you to start your own blog just so I can have something to read and make me laugh all the time. You are great.

That is all people – keep rocking is old school.

Jesse “captain makin’ it happen” Meredith

**side note… please leave comments, but know that I may not respond directly to them in the comments section. If you want to say something specifically to me, send me an e-mail at JesseM288@gmail.com and I will respond asap, thanks**

Friday, November 14, 2008

This Day is an Earful

or blogfull.

Hello family and friends and family of friends and friends of friends (and maybe friends of family?) all of whom I feel are quickly becoming my friends. This is Brian again. I might make a blog one of these days and pretend to be Taylor just so you all hear a little more about what he is up to. But for now I am just plain ol' B, me.

It's Thursday night here and I finished work for the week. All nine hours of it over at Pizzaria del Elvis (I like that more than simple ol' Elvis Pizza). I am spending a fair amount of time these days trying to find more work but am torn between being very picky in the places I look for a job and possibly not find a job for a few weeks, and being not picky at all and work wherever they need people who speak the native tongue for whatever price. The last couple days I investigated bookstores in the area to see if they perchance needed extra helpers during the busy summer months. My searching did not yield much. I found 3 bookstores on googlemaps within walking distance of Rose Bay. 1 place didn't need any help, and the other two don't seem to exist. One address on googlemaps sent me to an apartment complex down by the beach one neighborhood over. Unless there is a bookstore hidden in unit C on the 4th floor of 8 Mervyns St...well I don't know what the internets were thinking there. The other address I was pointed to took me up one of the main roads into Double Bay around here. I found the address I was looking for and the bookstore revealed itself as an Oporto's burgary. Once again, good work interwebs. I would blame Google specifically but I love Google. Speaking of, Google just released a video chat feature for gmail which I hope to use with anyone who wants to talk sometime soon.

So after searching for imaginary bookstores and before waitering for a party of no fewer than 4 Elvis impersonators, I went down to central Sydney to see if I could clear up a little $40 mystery that is appearing on my bank statement. I received a large charge on my account and there is no explanation as to why and rather than fighting through long call times and frustrating customer service reps on the phone I thought it would be less stressful to just go talk to someone in person. After explaining my problem at the branch office, the person behind the counter promptly informed me that their computer-programs-servers-world-wide-interwebs had just crashed/stopped functioning. He was happy to give me a phone and dial customer service for me. I proceeded to wait the obligatory 10 minutes for a customer service rep to become available and after another 10 minutes of discussing my problem and giving her all the necessary account numbers she informed me that their computers were down and I should try back another day.

So all around success on my missions out today. Walking back to the trainstation from my waste of time visit to citibank some peppy solicitor asked me if I was yet a proud owner of an amex card. I had a lot of choice words I considered sharing with the man in his suit about my lack of amex pride these days, but I refrained. I did give him one of the more nasty glares I have ever given anyone as I walked by, and then summoned up some angry music on my ipod to match my black mood. By the time I had finished an album's worth of bitter angry yelling which I like to think of as music by Simple Plan I was feeling considerably better. Then I realized I had listened to an entire album and was still waiting for the final bus to get me back to my home. That did not sit well with me either.

After a workout and a shower I felt cleansed of my day of not finding what I wanted, and I was ready for my evening at work. About half way through the shift a man walked in huge chops for sideburns and all dressed up in a suit. Rather than giving him the usual song and dance about his seating options and the proffering of a menu I figured he was here to see the owner. The owner of Elvis Pizza is himself an Elvis impersonator and seems to be friends primarily with other Elvis impersonators. Once all members of the King's council had arrived, there were four of them including the owner comparing their Elvis voices and singing along to the perpetual Elvis soundtrack in the restaurant. Having not worked during an actual Elvis performance I was eager hear what they got. It really seemed like a lot of fun and quite the spectacle and I enjoyed it as much as I could while trying to handle the Thursday rush during which we ran out fax paper and couldn't find our machine that handles bartercards. So in the end an eventful evening made up for a slow day. Also I won $2.60 off Jesse at poker after I got off work. Most of it was luck I think since I kept getting aces on the river. I'm not a big poker player and am still not completely sure how to use the term 'river' in most cases but I still felt pretty lucky tonight.

To finish up here I want to give a shout out to my Dad. Always ready to impart some spiritual wisdom on anyone who cares to listen. Some people change what they say and how they sound when they put things in writing and are half a world away. Not my padre though. And I love you for it. But if you even think of trying to sing a praise song when we video chat later this week I am hanging up right then and there.

Good Night from down under,
Brian the nerd

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

My job so far and stuff

Hey peoples – it’s jessem. Just a note about some recent happenings. I had my first night and morning of work last night and this morning. They both went pretty well. Last night started off a little silly because I walked in and they said there had been a lot of cancellations so I could go home if I wanted. I said come on now, be reasonable… It’s my first night and I want to learn something. So Sean told Samson to train me and some other girl a bit before letting us do some work. Midway through the training it got really busy so we had to get down to business. I started just running the pass (carrying plates and trays of food from downstairs up to the tables when they were ready), which was a good way to start because it helped me learn some dishes. Then Samson told me to wait one table, so I started doing that but I had no idea about what to recommend and it was their first time there, so I was kinda screwed. I just made some stuff up and they gave me a small tip so it all worked out in the end. It would have been fine if I was just waiting tables or just running food but they wanted me to do both so it got pretty hectic because I’d keep running from upstairs to downstairs to check the kitchen and back. I learned a lot and it was fun, though. I finished around 10:30 and ran to catch a bus.

As I was getting to the bus station… the bus I needed was just leaving. Since it was 10:30pm, I knew there wouldn’t be another one for a while, so I took off running after the bus – in my dress shoes, pants, and with my backpack. It was great. So anyway, I caught the bus stopped at a red light and knocked on the door and the guy just shook his head at me. So I checked for the busses blinker and just started running the way it was turning. After another block or two of sprinting I found the next stop for the bus and made it just in time. I thanked the driving and wiped the sweat from my brow.

Then this morning I worked at 6am! All we did was move empty kegs from the basement to the street level and move the new kegs down to replace them. Not too bad… And I got a free breakfast out of it. Then we set up the restaurant and bar for the day and I was out of there at 9:30am. Next stop… Bed.

After my nap Lindy and I went to the beach to hang out as T and E left for work and continued working, respectively. Nice day and lots of sun and relaxation at the beach until a couple dogs started going crazy and got sand all over everything. All-in-all a fun day, though. Thanks for reading… Adios.

Shout out of the blog…

Pie – I’m so proud of you mom… reading blogs on the internet and posting comments, it must take you hours though (for how slow you type). Thanks for helping to set up the little online video conference thing the other night, it was great. Even though it didn’t work out perfectly, I still had fun talking to everyone and kind of seeing you guys. You’re the best. Love you.