Day 278! Well… the day has arrived, my early early early morning shift. I was not the most thrilled about waking up this early, but at least I was going to go through it with a couple friends. It ended up being a really good day though, aside from the early morning.

I woke at 3am…

I went to bed at 10pm, which should’ve been a 5 hour night of sleep. Not great, but enough. But because of the clock moving forward an hour, I actually only got 4 hours of sleep!

I stumbled my way to the bathroom to get ready for the morning and then headed downstairs for breakfast. I may have been tired, but I still had a smile on my face!

Today’s super early start was no solo journey. My friends, Lewis and Theo, were joining me as well in this early morning escapade.

When we got downstairs… there were people still up from the night before! A number of our friends were just getting back from a late night out in the city. It was an incredibly odd feeling to be heading to work when they still hadn’t gone to bed.

We wrapped up our morning routines around 4am and headed out into the city streets.

The crazy thing is… they were still very busy. We went on about a 30 minute walk, through the center of downtown, and there were plenty of bars still open and people making their way to them or home. We were practically the only ones heading to work.

We zigzagged our way all the way to Fed Square, where our work was this morning. Today’s job was setting up for a senior event, that was showcasing the talents of senior members of the community.

As we watched the sun slowly rise, we got to work. First it was moving lots of plastic chairs around the square. Two other ARC hires showed up, one that was on my last job with me and one that was new. We then tore down a small marquee which my new gloves came in handy as we had to move cinder blocks around.

Then myself and the two others (that weren’t my friends), got sent to help set up some safety cones so other workers could set up their popup tents.

After we set the safety area up… we were told to watch the road for bicyclists and make sure they didn’t hit any of the workers. This practically turned into 2 hours of standing around doing nothing. Every now and then the manager, Dan, who was known to be “not the nicest or fun to work with, came around and I asked him if there was anything else needed. He told us that they overstaffed the job so we just needed to hang tight.

It was pretty boring and frustrating I woke up this early for this, but at least I was getting paid and not overworking myself.

It turned out though, that during these two hours, Lewis and Theo were working their butts off setting up another marquee. Not sure why they didn’t want the extra hands, but oh well… not much I can do about that.

We finally got asked to help again and we had to set up all the plastic chairs we brought out earlier in the morning… but right when we started, they told us to take our 15 minute paid break…

Eventually we got to setting up the chairs, then putting tables and chairs in some of the marquees, and hanging up group labels in the marquees as well.

It ended up being a very easy job, just super early in the morning. Also the manager, Dan, wasn’t near as bad as everyone had said. But maybe this environment was less stressful than other jobs. He just didn’t care to learn any of our names, which is fair enough seeing that the contract workers probably come and go often.

Exhausted, but not as tired as I thought I’d be, we made our way back to the hostel around 9:15am.

I had a quick snack of hummus before heading up to my room to shower and take a nap. A lot of my friends that were just waking up were shocked to see us back from work. Overall it was a strange morning in terms of when I worked vs others daily activities.

I took a nice 30 minute nap, I didn’t really feel the urge to take anything longer. And then I had an absolutely wonderful time FaceTiming my sister and her partner! It’s been a while since we’ve caught up and I haven’t had the chance to meet their partner and do my du diligence as a brother to sus out the situation.

After the intense shakedown (just kidding), I went downstairs to read and relax in the TV room. The second part of the Way of Kings is holding up to the first part, which I’m very excited about! Eventually it became time for lunch and I whipped up some hummus quesadillas.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon reading and watching movies in the TV room. One of the movies we watched was Instant Family and it tore me away from my reading with a great dramady about a family adopting foster kids.

Some of my friends were planning on grabbing some pints after dinner, so I hopped over to the kitchen to eat before joining them.

I also finished off my 1 kilo tub of hummus… so time to go grocery shopping and get some more!

I played a few hands of Shithead with my French friends before as well and ended up winning this time around. I couldn’t take it easy on them anymore.

Immy got back from her day of work selling tarts and brought back a TON of tarts for the hostel. 66 to be exact. We munched on some and then headed out to the pub to watch the Rugby League Grand Final.

Immy, Q, and I met up with Immy’s friend Rob who she met on Koh Tao! Rob was originally going to be Immy and my third roommate when we were planning on finding a house. He’s a really nice guy and it was fun to finally meet him!

I’ve never really sat down and watched a rugby game before… but I really enjoyed it! It was a crazy sport to watch. I picked up on the rules as it went but it was super fast paced and pretty wild how aggressive it was. Much different than AFL and NFL. The AFL was closely the same thing, but a lot slower and the NFL is a lot more tactical and play by play vs continuous running and tackling.

Q, Immy, and I went to one more pub after which had a free jukebox (that we took over) and free pool. Immy and I played two games and ended up going 1-1 and after hanging out for a while we made our way back to the hostel.

Before going to bed, I got sucked back into the TV room where lots of people were watching the end of the Conjuring… and then, after a bit of horror, it was finally time for bed!

It was a long and exhausting day… BUT, it ended up being another really great day in the city. I still feel like I want to move on to another town relatively soon, but for now I’ll enjoy the company of these awesome people, keep looking for less strenuous work, and keep living the Australian lifestyle!

As of right now, I only work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday… so we’ll see what the rest of the week holds for me!

– Elie