Day 319! Today was a longgg day, but a really good one! I woke up early to take my surfboard out with my friend Will, then I came back home for work, had a break, and went back for a long night of work! It was a very eventful and fun day.

I woke up this morning bright and early! Will and I were planning on heading to the beach before work and surfing and I was optimistic it was going to actually happen this time.

So I got up around 7:30am and got ready for the morning.

Around 8am I got a text from Will saying he was up, he found some wax lying around his house, so we were a go! And around 8:30am he was at my door with his truck.

I was super excited as I loaded up my surfboard into the bed and we set out for a new beach I hadn’t been to yet, Turners Beach.

Turners Beach is a perfect beach for beginner surf boarders and it’s where my lessons are going to be next week! It’s also a very flat bike ride to this beach, so I’m definitely going to attempt biking my surfboard here soon too.

We unloaded the surfboard and set up our little area on the beach. The waves were pretty ideal for beginners this morning. Fairly small and spaced out. This made “paddling out” very easy… though we were able to just walk out since the water was shallow enough, one of the reasons why Turners is beginner friendly!

The water was also a very pleasant temperature, which was good because I forgot my rash guard (swim shirt).

The first few waves I tried to hit didn’t go great. I was able to paddle most of them to catch up (the longboard can catch almost every wave) but I was struggling to stand up. But then, after a few attempts, I was popping up each wave that I caught!

Now the waves weren’t anything of note, but they were perfect to practice paddling and standing up. Will and I switched off a time or two, he doesn’t have his own board currently, but today convinced him to get one so hopefully in the near future we’ll get more surf adventures going.

It was a blast and great exercise for the morning! On top of that, all my experience getting (and enjoying) beaten up by the waves in the ocean was very helpful for this endeavor, so thank you dad for instilling the love of the ocean in me!

Will had to work at 10am, so after about 45 minutes of surfing we hustled back to the shore and made our way back to my house.

I’m glad Will and I finally got a chance to hang out again outside of work! He’s a super nice guy and as I’ve said, it’s nice to have people my age to hang out with.

I personally don’t have work until 12pm, so I had plenty of time to relax, attempt to nap (but my head was buzzing from surfing), read, and then head up the hill to work!

During this shift I got to help with more with the Kino and TAB betting register. If I’m being completely honest, it’s not my favorite part of the job… at all. I know I’m new to it, but there’s something about handling peoples money for a game of chance that I don’t especially like the thought of. However, I forget if I said this already, it did give me a small pay bump, which I’m not sure how much it is… but I’ll find out on Tuesday!

I was supposed to work till 3pm, but the lunch shift was super slow. So my manager sent me home early to rest up for tonight’s big night of work. We were having a DJ night, so it was probably going to pull a big crowd, which meant a very late night for me.

I had two hours to kill, so I stopped by the local grocery store, bought more tuna and bread, and made myself my lunch of tuna wraps.

I’m lucky that I don’t get bored of the same food, because this is a great and tasty way to be saving money! The more I can save no means the more I can travel and do without the need of a job. Which will be especially useful as the US is 99.9% my next stop… another western expensive country.

During this break I took a power nap and read more. I think I have a couple days off coming up so I’m going to devour this book (hopefully).

4pm rolled around and it was time for my second shift of the day! So I set back out into the bright, sunny, warm day and headed up the hill for work.

The night started slow… dinner was fairly tame and as we neared closer and closer to the DJ starting, not many people were showing up. I took my dinner break around 8:15pm and had a lamb roast. Which with my discount was only $9!

But, as we suspected, the night eventually picked up and it became another night of pumping out drinks, adrenaline, and lots of fun!

I was slinging drinks left and right and as most late nights have gone, I was just stuck behind the bar with my coworkers as we tried our best to keep up with the demand for drinks. But with good music and good company, and mostly good patrons, it was a smooth process.

These nights have been busy, but I can tell they’re still a bit “slow.” I don’t know what exactly to expect from the summer crowd, but I bet it’s going to be nuts!

The DJ threw down a fun set so we were bopping and singing (or at least I was) behind the bar. And before we knew it, midnight rolled around and it was time to close up shop!

As we were closing and cleaning up, my manager was cashing out the registers and one of my coworkers was curious how many transactions they did (each time the till is cashed out so take note, this could be drinks for multiple people on one transaction… so this is a minimum). I personally had 1100 transactions today and had the most again! I guess I’m getting pretty good at making drinks quickly!

But that’s mind blowing… because on average people were ordering at LEAST 2 drinks so at a minimum that’s 2,000 drinks and with drinks costing about $8-10 that’s a lot of money people are spending. But I served multiple groups with orders of anywhere from 6-9 drinks.

We finished up cleaning around 1:00am and hung out for almost another hour, having a beer, playing pool, eating leftover pies (that we have for people needing food throughout the night, NSW drinking law), and chatting.

My coworker, Sam, gave me a lift back home and then it was time to shower and collapse in bed!

Tomorrow I have an early start, with work at 10am… so hopefully I’m not too tired for work!

– Elie