Commonwealth Games: Melbourne

Well i'll start from the begin rather than jumping and around and confusing you all, the other day ummmm wednesday we finished work early so i got my ass down the the hairdresser in Murchison and enquired about gettin my hair streaked blonde, she was very nice and asked me to come bk at 430, so I went and got some sun bathin in and abit of readin to pass the time as ric had gone for a jog!!!! (30 odd degrees, no clouds, prat!!!)

So eventually 430 came around and I drove into murch and got myself into the hairdresser' she put the steak cap on my and started pullin my hair through....some bits of my hair are really sensitive hahaha but it was funny jumpin around the seat, she found it halarious, anyway we got chattin as you do with the hairdresser and I told her how i'd really like to go to Melbourne to see the games before it ends, she said "why dont you come with me 2moro, im going down midday and comin bk around 10pm?" I asked if i could bring ric....fine she said, all I had to do was get the afternoon off work!!! back to the hair....I had the stuff on for quite a while then i went under this miniture jet engine that blaster hot air on to me, this was to make me even hotter in the 30 degree afternoon heat!!!! and when i had all the stuff washed out, my hair was way past blonde hahaha looks ace though :) ill put a pic up here, I then cruised on down to the local pub for a few beers with a chap from work Jessie, I went and got Ric abit later and we had some pizza and drinks, before retirin back to the motel, for sleep, as we had to in work for 7am, we left Jessie playin in the pool comp till 1am whi9ch he won, dnt know if its worth stayin up for though?!?!?! Pool Champ or really tiered next day????

Asked Carmelo first thing if we cud have the afternoon off, told him who i was goin with, becus she's know Carmelo since his was a nip (not a nip nip, a nipper lol) he gave us ther ok :) sweet!!!

12 noon we run out of work and got bk to the motel, had a 1minute shower and then we jumped into Jenny's car and headed of to Melbs, we stopped a service station to which I got bummed for a chick roll and drink somet like 15 bucks, was nice though :)

Got to Melbounrne for around 230pm me and ric headed straight a tickect office at the exhibiution center, they had sold out of every ticket for everything, but the lady gave me a marker and paper to make a sign askin for tickets! they we raced over to for the Rialto Tower Observation Deck on Collin Street, (some facts it stands 253 metres high and is the tallest office building in the southern hemisphere, it is covered in 13,000 windows, its takes 38 seconds to reach the top from ground level, ohh and there is 95 kilometres of lift cable pulling the lifts up and down) we took plenty of photos, didnt spwnd to long up there as we still wanted to run aroud a few shops before heading to the M.C.G (Melbourne Cricket Ground) to try and get tickets to the Track and Field. I brought a couple of new t-shirts and then we trekked off to the MCG, wen we got on the way to were it was more crowed I got the sign out, and after about 10mins of no luck I started to shout out "Ticket Needed!!!! Does anyone have spare tickets to sell!!!!!" people were lookin at me like an idiot, some were laughin at my extreme measure to get tickets, but then this lady came over and said "ssssshhhhhhh you not supposed to buy tickets like this, its illegal, pretend you know me" so I started askin her how she had been, and wot a co-insidence we bumped into each other here of all places hahaahah we ended up payin 20 bucks each for a ticket, with a face value of 55 a peice, so well happy with that. We got some drinks and headed off to MCG, got there and had my bag riggerously searched, its ok i had nuthin to hide :) we got our seats, got some food and chilled the hell out, I was sweatin like SCFP in Bambu after he's bin dancing for and hour (private joke, the boys will get it :) but i was sweatin bad, so hot and in jeans!!! We saw Women's Pole Vault, Women's 100m Hurdles, Men's 200m, Men's 200m EAD T46, Men's 400m Hurdles, Women's High Jump, Women's 800m and the Men's Discus Throw.

We watched all of the athletics up until about 920pm wen we had to leave becus Jenny was ready to go, no worries, we headed back past the Yarra and watched the water show from the 71 fish water features on the Yara to celeberate the games, was preet good. Got bk to the crown casino were Jenny was parked and we cudnt find the car, so we had to go from level to level lookin for it hahaahaha we eventually got on our way and i think ric fell striaght to sleep in the back, but I didnt want to seem rude so I stayed up and chatted with Jenny, we got back to Murch about 1230 and hit the hay, cus yet again we had work at 7am.


Gonna try and get tickets to the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne next weekend, that'll be be wicked. (luke ill get some shots of Schumacher if i can for you)

Speak to you all soon dudes!!!!

Proper update :)

Im sure your all hanging off the edges of your seats for a proper update well, here the best i can do for now...

Im currently in a town called Murchison, which is near to a place called Shepparton (which is where I am now on the internet)

Murchison is as close to country as you can get, nothing happens there EVER!!!! They have one shop 1 hair dresser, 1 pub, 1 laundret and 2 pay phones.....oh and a bridge so that you can access all of these wonderful convieneces!

Right I got to Murch on the 25th of Feb and met up with Ricardo (A German friend of Ciiran's from Sydney) her was staying in the motel and had done 1 days work so far, he introduced me to his boss (Stu, it happened to be his 50th birthday that day and we were all invited to the party) I parked up were they said there was still power (there had been a power cut....great I though!!!) Went over to the motel with Rick and met the other dude stayin stayin there James, he was from England, sound lad, funny as hell!! (once i found out her was into Anchorman all we did was quote lines from the movie allday) anyhoo we went over to the party and all I'll say is OMG (bible bashers isnt the word, they had a band on that every song was a hymn and in between every song they thanked god for god giving stu 50 years of wonderfull life on this planet of his....I cudnt beleieve my ears to be honest, I was expecting a rite old party, everyone was sitting around stunned!!!) He seemed nice enough (would later learn he's a rite hipercrit and out to make as much money off people as he can, so he doesnt have to lift a fat finger of his own, fat samoan!!!) Got up for and waited where we were asked to, Stu turned up 30mins later, we all got in one of his vans and went to the fields, stopping at the shops to buy sopme rubber gloves, was told i wud need them....got stuck a few times in the mud, we all got out and pushed the van through the sloppy mud shite and this other car out there, we finally got to the machine, they got it started and we pretty much got goin then, you sit on this little plastic seat next to a conveyor belt that takes the tomatoes up the top bin, but you have to either scrunch your legs up or keep side stepping every time the machines edges along (you go along at about no-miles an hour, so slow!!! but i kept asking everyday if i could drive and they let on day 3, i drove one length of the paddock...thats a field to you an me... and then i drove back up the other way, took about 5 odd hours and during the last 45 mins I fell asleep about 15 times and woke up to people either shouting "stop" "go" or "get us out of the bushes" hahahahahaha was so funny, it absolutely recked me, never drove again, out of personal choice)

To cut a long story shoirt I did 5 days of this toomato picking and i felt like dying, its possibly the worst job I ever done, and will ever have to do....I rather clean toilet with my bare hands than do that, every part of my body ached, my back felt fcuked from leanin down all day to pick "the best colour" thats all you ever heard, "pick the colour, then some green". As there was 10 of us working and we got 40 dollars a bin (a bin is half a ton of toms) that equates to 27 bins is 108 bucks and let me tell you picking 13.5 tons of toms is no easy task, and these people want to stay and pick 38, 40 bins!!! starting at 7am 27 bins wud take till 6pm'ish, you'd felt like a broken person...but it really hits home, cus some of these people do this for a living everyday, they cant have any education, prospects or common sense!!!! no-one shud work like that for shit pay like that!! and we were always bein told dnt put the storks in and small green ones....i'll speak on behalf of everyone on them machines that has sense, you just reach into the tom plant and ripping everythin u can off it, brqanches, storks...the lot, all your thinkin is 27 bins before dark!!!! nothing else, 1 break lunch and that was about 20mins, they all cudnt wait to get bk on the machine and get working again, i was gud for nothing but sleeping!!!!

Anyway, we got talking to some people 1 night in the supermarket and they gave us a number of were we cud get some work in a shed, packing or stacking toms, so we called it....no luck, but the guy called me back at 4am the next day and asked us to work, I said no, but told him i would be in the next day, and that i had to sort things out with my current boss. Through 1 thing and another we cudnt get into with stu to tell hime we wudnt be in work friday, and we went straight to the new job at "Vraca" just down the road in Murch.

We have been working there ever since, we get 11 bucks an hour, and we have pretty long day, some day we are there for 5am and dpont leave till 7pm, so even though the pay isnt great, you can work long hours which helps to bulk up the pay check, me and rick work on the same section (1st's) and other james worked on 2nd's (I say worked cus he's now left for Brisbane to meet up with his bird etc, so just me and Rick at work now, but we know everyone there, everyone says hi when they go past, we are pretty much vetrans of the 1st class section, we see alot of newbies comin and goingm we have to show them the ropes and keep them in line hahaha its funny :)

We work with some pretty interesting people, although Rick gets down about his missus alot!!! She is in Sydney and he's dyin to be with her, and misses her loads and although he dont say it, you can tell cus, some days he dnt eat loads, and he's tiered, but conincidently he hasnt heard from his bird either!!! So note to all you women out there who's boyfriends are working away from you, its not all fun and piss ups...think of the people they have to work with for christs sake!!!!

Um had a day off the other day, think i worked somet like 23 days staright, I cud have gone in...I mean I had to drop Rick off at 6 so i was up anyway. But Ciiran Ha dcome down on our say so that there was work here, and then my boss let me down, whilst he was on the bus on the way down here (im sure he did it to spite me cus it was raining....things with the tomato game, when it rains, no toms get picked, cus the machines get stuck in the bogs etc....hence boss being pissed at no shiney red toms rolling through the door, so think he did it just to make himself feel happy.

Stupid facts about were I work:
1 bin (half a ton remember) goes into the system ever 3 mins, so an average 12 hour shift means we process 240 bins which is 120 ton....(this is fresh tomato's not gas).

1 bin of gas tomatos can be processed at 1 per min, so we could do 60 in 1 hour.

Tomatos that are green, can be riped super fast by gasing them with ethalene, apparently they give of ethalene as they ripen, and it can be used to speed the whole process up.

The room were toms are gased is nick named the "hitler room".

1 bos of toms is sold for 60 bucks, we fit 96 on a pallet, 960buck per pallet, weight 960 kilos.

On average 1st's send out between 40 and 50 pallets per day.

ummmm cant think of anymore off the top of my head!!!!

Im gonna shoot, the boys are waitin in the charriot.

Speak to you soon you lot. Hope everyone is ok, anyone from oz who is readin this, cant wait to get bk to uk and got partyin!!!!

(the pic above is of me at around 7am out in the tomato fields in my boxers and rubber gloves hahaha and the other one is of the machine that u have to sit on to pick the toms, me and ric crashed out at afternoon smoko ans the last one is this cool tree outside!!)

Murchison Victoria: Slave Labour

Sorry bin soo long, but this is only goinna be short to, im currently wokring in a shit hole called Murchison, which is in North Victoria and is in the middle of nowhere aka dumptown.

Anyhoo, did tomato picking for 1 weeks, it was tooooo hard and toooo little paid, now im working in a tomato packing factory for 11 bucks an hour and we generally start at 5am and finish at 730pm 7 days a week!!! Slave Labour isnt the word.

well im really tiered, gotta be up in 7 and a half hours and i gotta drive 30k to get bk, im writting this from a an over priced internet cafe in Shepparton, which is 30k north of Murchison.

rite ill write a longer peice when i have a day off!!! HA as if that will happen!

Its not all bad, i laugh all day long at how ridiculas is, and besides i dont have to do it for that long, some of them poor souls have worked there for years and years!!!

over and out.

email me people :)

hope your all ok