Day 282! After a few nice days off and a day of applying for jobs, it’s time to get back to work. Today I was heading to the University of Melbourne to help Open Air Events set up some marquees. Thankfully it was a gorgeous day out, so spending all day working outside wasn’t the worst thing… but it was still exhausting.

Unlike yesterday, my alarm went off at 5:30am and I got up pretty much instantaneously. I was super groggy and my body didn’t want to be up at this hour… I think the few days off let it slack off!

I got ready for my work day, not knowing how long it would be. This is one of the annoying parts of the job.

I may have been tired, but I still had a big smile on my face. Might as well enjoy my time with this job since I decided to do it! Also I knew I was about to see some of my friends bright and early as well.

Immy and Charlie both had early morning starts and joined a few minutes after me. We were also joined by Laz and Adam, who both were on the same job as me this morning.

Laz is a really nice guy from France, he’s also a former mechanical engineer! Adam… is… very chatty. He’s from Ireland and I can’t say he’s my favorite person I’ve ever met in a hostel and I wasn’t especially excited to work with him on top of having to deal with him at the hostel too.

We wrapped up breakfast and set out on a 25 minute walk to work.

It was a windy morning, but I could feel that the weather was going to warm up throughout the day. By the time we made it to the university, the sun was up and it was go time!

We kicked off work at 7:15am and we were setting up three big and two small marquees in the south lawn of the campus. This entailed a lot of carrying of steel parts, but thankfully there were 10 ARC employees, plus a big fleet of the company that was hiring us.

Throughout the day, I helped set up the marquees, placing metal pieces everywhere, hanging up the walls, carrying orange weights… again, and I also got to spot the fork lift some since we were moving it around places students could walk.

I really enjoy working with the Open Air Events guys. They’re all super nice and friendly! The owner even remembered my name, which is surprising since they called most of the other guys “you” or “buddy.” Now he did called me Eli from time to time, but hey, close enough.

We actually flew through building the marquees, a lot faster than they thought we would. This was probably because we had so many hands on deck.

We took a lunch break just before 12:30pm. Since I have no clue how long these jobs are… I don’t pack a lunch. So, Laz, Theo, and I wandered over to a nearby food court.

Being on a college campus has its perks! This meal was only $12… and I love chicken wings. It’s been way too long since I’ve last had them. These were decent, but I was very hungry after a long morning of hard work, so I devoured the meal.

45 minutes later and we were back to it. We ended up working all the way to 4:45pm. It was a long day but we got pretty close to wrapping up the project.

This job was supposed to take till Saturday, but the odds are fairly high that we finish it before then.

Adam had to run an errand, thankfully, so Laz and I walked home together. On the way, Laz had to run an errand as well, so I walked the rest of the way alone… but my legs were tired and Laz ended up catching up right before I got back.

I was mentally and physically drained. So I immediately took a shower and ate an early dinner.

I went to the TV room afterwards and plopped down to watch some movies. Crazy Stupid Love was on when I came in and I watched half of it. Everyone in the TV room left after it was done, so I decided to turn on the Studio Ghibli film, Princess Mononoke.

I’ve been meaning to watch this movie for a while… and I’ll still be meaning to because I got halfway before I started falling asleep on the couch from work. The movie was really good, so I paused it to continue another day when I could fully focus on it!

I then went upstairs to head to bed early because I’ll be waking up bright and early again to go to the same job site.

Today was a nice day of work. Even though it was tough, it was a gorgeous day out and I thoroughly enjoyed joking around with the guys working today. Also in some fun news, I’ve already started hearing back from companies I applied for.

One of which is a liveaboard scuba diving position on the south of the Great Barrier Reef! So we’ll see if anything comes from that. They wanted to have a phone call today… but duty called. I also got a call from a retail job in a beach town… but they only do in person interviews. So nothings coming from that one for now.

Hopefully tomorrow will be equally as nice of a day!

– Elie