Day 281! Well… as the title of this post says. I spent the entirety of today applying for jobs. Not jobs in Melbourne… jobs for all around Australia. I want to find something outside of a city, preferably near a surfing beach. But I guess we’ll see what happens!

I woke up this morning expecting to be woken up by my alarm… but I somehow slept through it.

Instead of waking up at 8:30am I woke up a little past 9am. I was a bit confused how I slept through my alarm and hoped that it wasn’t going off and annoying everyone in the hostel. I’m just guessing it didn’t go off all together for some reason.

Hopefully that doesn’t happen for work tomorrow!

I got to eating breakfast around 9:45am. It’s been really nice having more to add to my oats, makes breakfasts a bit more exciting. I still miss my breakfasts in SE Asia… cheap and practically a regular meal.

While I was eating, I received a message from someone very special! Before I left Koh Tao, I gave our boat boy, Naing, my number. We got pretty tight while I was with Taco Shack and he wanted to keep in touch while I was away. But I hadn’t heard from him since I gave him my number!

It brought a big smile to my face seeing a message from him! Even if he did spell my name wrong.

I miss Koh Tao a lot and I think about going back every day. But I’m going to continue to keep pushing myself to explore Australia for the time being! I have a ton to see and I definitely have not given this country a fair chance yet.

I went to the TV room after breakfast and started jamming on the guitar. A few people started to come into the room to sit on their phones, so I continued playing. Eventually a couple people started singing along and suggesting songs. It was a nice way to start the morning.

Once I stopped playing, I watched a couple more episodes of Heartstopper and then it was time for a late lunch.

Most people at the hostel were out at the beach today (or work), so I had the kitchen all to myself. I decided to make a bigger meal because I had the space, so I whipped up some chicken and pasta! I sliced up a cucumber as well so I could dip it into my giant tub of hummus.

As much as I wanted to go to the beach today, I needed to start applying for jobs. I’ve been putting it off too much and I needed to buckle down and do it.

I grabbed my laptop and headed back to the TV room where I sat the rest of the day applying for a bunch of different jobs…

I applied for scuba diving positions in both tourism and the farming industry. There’s sea food farming and pearl farming in Australia… not necessarily a job that I’d be super excited for, but it’s a step in the right direction! I also applied for deckhand/boat boy jobs in these industries as well.

I applied for retail and hospitality jobs up and down the east coast as well! Ranging from restaurants to hotels to bars to clothing stores. The idea of working in a smaller surfing beach town really excites me, so hopefully one of those pans out!

I finally started the application process for some farms too. But I’ll dig further into that either tomorrow or later this week. If I work on a farm, I’d rather not be picking fruits… but working with a smaller family farm or with animals could be some interesting work!

This pretty much led me up to the end of the day! My friends all started coming back from the beach very late and I called it a day of job hunting. I’m hoping something comes from it and I’ll stay optimistic, but I’ll continue my hunt tomorrow!

I had such a late lunch that I wasn’t super hungry for dinner. But I wanted to eat something so I had a light one.

After eating I called it a night!

It wasn’t an eventful day, but I’m happy I started looking for work outside of Melbourne. If worst comes to worst, I could always move to a place before having a job… but I’d like to have one lined up this time around! It would make life a little easier, but also where’s the fun in that!

Tomorrow I get back to laboring. I was supposed to start at 6:30am but it was pushed to 7:15am. So I’ll get a little bit more sleep than I expected! We’ll see what they have me doing tomorrow!

– Elie