Day 314! Today’s an exciting day! I finally got my hands on a surfboard. Now it’s not mine and I’m borrowing it, but I’m excited to finally have one available for me! It took me 2 months, but I’m finally going to be able to live my Aussie surfing dream. Oh, I also worked today and relaxed at home, but that’s less important.

I didn’t have work till this afternoon (or the arvo as the Aussies call it), so I took advantage of that and slept in.

I don’t sleep in super late, but sleeping in till almost 10am made the worlds of difference. Last week had been a bunch of work and doing a close to open was definitely tough, but rewarding! Both monetarily and work wise. I’m really enjoying the interaction with customers, hanging with my coworkers, and also perfecting my beer pours. There’s a fun art to it!

After finally getting up, I made myself some breakfast. I ran out of oats, so this would have to do this morning. But I was planning on remedying that later.

First thing after breakfast though, I FaceTimed my parents!

As with every week, I very much enjoyed chatting with them and catching up. We even chatted about my very probable adventures back to the US for a couple of months in the late spring/early summer! I doubt I’ll be sticking around the US for super long before traveling again. But I’m not sure where I’ll go after my little dalliance.

After our nice FaceTime, I decided to hop over to the local grocery store to get a couple essentials. I needed bread and oats so I could keep having my regular breakfasts.

I also decided to grab myself a fresh vegi samosa from the store as well. I was going to have lunch closer to my work time because I knew I wouldn’t be having dinner till later. So it was nice to have a little snack to tide me over.

Originally, I wanted to head to the beach today. But with a cloudy and dreary day, and a late start, I decided to relax at home and enjoy the comfort of my bed. I watched some more bleach and am now within 6 episodes of the end of the main series!! I’ve been watching this show for pretty much over a year, so it’s a bit crazy that I’m finally almost done with it!

I also read for a couple hours too before making myself lunch.

I whipped up some quesadillas with tomato’s and had a couple clementines and cucumber with hummus. I scarfed this down and went right back to reading up until my work shift.

By this point the cloudy day turned into a light drizzle. I was glad I didn’t get caught in it again, I probably would’ve if I had gone to the beach like I had planned. But as I was about to venture into the rain and up to work, my roommate was planning on heading up to the bar anyways, since Mondays was free beer for the Social Club members (which we’re a part of as staff members).

He offered to give me a ride in his car and as we were pulling out, someone he knew was about to make the walk up the hill as well. So he gave him a ride too! My roommate is a very nice guy.

I had a pretty short and sweet shift. It was only 3 hours, so I worked from 5pm to 8pm. It was a slow Monday night but at least I had my coworkers to hang out with. I still served a bunch of drinks and my manager, who was on his day off, was at the bar with family and ordering rounds.

I poured him beer for a few of the rounds and one of the times he told me that one of my pours was beautiful. Not a bad compliment! A few other people throughout the night complimented my pours, one said “that’s a crisp pour” and I got a lot of “good on ya.”

I’ll humbly brag and will say I was pouring some really good beers tonight!

As my shift came to a close, I had my knock off beer and hung out at the bar. By this point, the rain was pouring down and throughout the shift there were a number of huge crashes of thunder and lightning.

While I tried to wait out the rain, I got roped into a conversation by a fairly drunk and older Irish/English man on holiday in Yamba. He did order me a beer, which was nice of him… but the conversation was pretty painful and I really didn’t want to chat with him. Luckily for most of my shift I had avoided conversation with him, until this point. Finally, he got the curtesy bus home and I was free from his looping conversations about America, how dumb Americans are, and about all the family members he has living in America.

After he left, one of the regulars invited me over to sit with him and another one of the regulars. Now these guys were much more enjoyable to sit with and both are very nice guys. I chatted a bit with them about my plans in Australia and my travels and such. But eventually I realized the rain wasn’t stopping anytime soon.

So I asked my coworker if he could take me home on the curtesy bus and he was more than happy to.

But before I left, I got my hands on something very exciting. In one of the sheds at work, there were a number of old surfboards collecting dust. It turned out that they’d been sitting there for a couple of years and hadn’t been moved. So when the head of the kitchen suggested I borrow one, I thought that’d be a perfect idea! In the pile, there was a 9’1” longboard surfboard that was going to be perfect to learn on! So I pulled it out of storage, loaded it onto the bus, and made my way home.

I finagled the board inside and put it in our screened in porch for now!

There’s a bit of a dent in it, probably why it was in storage. But my plan is to patch it up (or get someone to) before I surf with it. It’s the least I can do for borrowing this. I’m really excited to take it out at some point though and hopefully I’ll get a lesson in soon so I’ll be more confident when I take it out!

I finished off my night with making a pot of noodles, heating up my leftover chicken, and using some store bought pasta sauce for dinner.

I also finished up my large tub of hummus and my cucumber as well.

After this, it was time for bed!

Tomorrow I’ll be spending most of my day attending a virtual Responsible Conduct of Gaming (RCG) class to get certified to work with anything gambling related at the bar. This will be helpful for my shifts so that I can assist with the gambling situations, instead of having to ask someone else too. It will also make sure I can work more morning shifts since there’s less bartenders on those shifts!

It’s going to be a long class, but we’ll see how it goes!

– Elie