Gold Coast

Gold Coast, view from where I lived

After I hopped off the plane and found a place to live, I thought the hard part was over.  That was really the only thing that I was worried about.  Matt had left me, so I was officially on my own in another new country.  I've never had trouble finding work, so the place to live I figured had to be the needle in the haystack.

I was so very wrong.

This doesn't happen all the time mind you, but occasionally I do have these lapses in judgement and things are not always as they seem.

I've known it for awhile but it is definitely true that if something seems to be too good to be true, it usually is.  You just have to wait for the ball to drop.  I realize now why I was so blinded when I first arrived but I couldn't see it then.  I was so happy to finally be in Australia.

The weather was finally warm and the sun was shinning, as opposed to the cold, rain, and wind I had just came from in New Zealand.  There were beautiful woman everywhere, my head was on a constant swivel and I hadn't even reached the sand yet.  These are the main factors that most likely led to me not having my guard up.

I couldn't find work to save my life.  I went out every single day for one month straight, I probably printed over 200 resumes.  I heard the same story everywhere I went, "You just missed the season", "We are looking for people, we'll call you for a trial", "Come back next week".  Blah blah blah.  They were all being complete turd burglars.  I know now that actually having a job on your resume FROM AUSTRALIA is a big deal, they want to see that you've worked in the country before and are reliable enough to stick around longer than a couple of weeks.

It's one thing to not be hiring at the moment, it's another thing to lie about it.  I absolutely hate that moment when I walk into a venue (especially if it's a bar) and the manager takes one look at me and decides immediately that they are "not hiring".  I've seen it 100 times, it's the "you don't have tits and I can't possibly sleep with you" glance.  It's ridiculous.  I've worked with plenty of girls in the past and seen them in the venues I applied at.  Not all mind you but most with more cleavage than actual bar experience.

Travellers Diet does have it's perks 

I kept plugging away however.  I had to find something.  This was the scariest part of my trip so far.  I had been there for 1 month with no work at all.  I was literally starving.  I reached a breaking point where I had $11 to my name!  I was eating ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I felt homeless in this really plush apartment that I couldn't fully enjoy because of the terrible harpies that I lived with.  They were terrible.

I now realize it was partly my fault though.  I should have never lived with them.  I was so worried about staying in Gold Coast, getting settled, starting to work and creating a life that I didn't see the big picture.  I see now that I should have just went straight to a hostel and lived there for a few weeks and looked for work and got a better feel for the place.  It would have saved me money and I would have realized after a few weeks that Gold Coast was not the place for me.  I didn't do that, so I got burned.

Lesson learned.

Surfers Paradise, QLD, Australia

Surfers Paradise is like a really nice Myrtle Beach, or, how they would wish a really nice Myrtle Beach would be.  With separate shopping centers in each suburb, a casino, a stadium, theme parks that actually work, and so on and so forth.  So it was Myrtle Beach on steroids basically.

I found work on the last day that I COULD pay rent.  Melbas at the Park is a bar/club, one of the more popular bars in Gold Coast.  I went in and had my interview, they said they were looking for 1 male bartender (I didn't see 1 male bartender the entire time I was there by the way, 3 male managers who doubled as the bartenders and a slew of dirty pillow maidens)...so I could either do that for what equated to about 10 hours a week, or I could do a less glamorous and more lucrative job for 40+ hours a week.

I chose the later because I was broke and needed whatever I could get.  I decided early on that I would work as much as I could for 2 reasons, 1) I had a friend coming to visit in December which I would need money for and 2) I was through with Gold Coast and it was time to move on, I just needed to money to do that.  It's not that GC is a bad place.  It's lovely, for about a week or 2.  Nice vacation spot, terrible place to live.  The people there I found very pretentious and pompous, not all but most.  It's all about who you know, what you have, where you come from...well, I'm a traveller and I don't know anyone, have 2 bags and very little possessions and come from America....so that's 0-3, I hate those types of people...not the beachy relaxed atmosphere I was hoping for.

Bike rides to work at 6am aren't too bad

So that's how I became the storeman of Melbas.  Basically I showed up at 6am every morning just as they club was letting out and restocked the entire venue, changed the kegs, moved the stock from one location to another, unloaded the truck, cleaned out the taps....all the absolute shit jobs you could think of to do in a bar, I was the guy doing them.

The only reasons I got by doing them for a month was they let me keep my iPod so I just jammed out the whole time and didn't think about it and the other reason was my boss, Steve. It was usually just me, him, and the guy counting the money from the night's take that early in the morning.  He helped me so much and I owe him a debt of gratitude.

Steve used to be a traveller.  It helps when you meet these people along the way.  Maria was a traveller as well, so was my boss at Creoles in New Zealand.  They understand what you're going through a little more.  A lot of people travel and usually they're willing to help others in the same position.

Steve was a great guy, rough exterior with a heart of gold.  One of those "you have to get to know him" type of guys because he doesn't just let anyone in.  He was from Australia, married  with 2 little girls, lovely wife (she offered me a place to stay when I was "getting kicked out" but you'll read that soon enough).

Another little tidbit about Steve is he was making over 6 figures at this job.  How was he making over 6 figures as a store man of a club?  I have no idea, he wouldn't tell me, he literally changed the subject every time.  Trust me, I probed him for this information everyday.  It raised my curiosity more during stories he would tell me, like about installing solar panels on his house...blah blah blah, white people problems, yak yak yak.  All I know is the place wouldn't function without him.

Titles aside, he is the boss of the place, apart from the owner.  Everyone answered to Steve.  When the other employees started filing in around 10-11am, if something happened, they would call him.  Oh, and he had a wicked glass eye!  From an accident when he was younger that he didn't get fixed properly.  He would be looking at you and it would just trail off, like this sentence....

I think he was a little sensitive about it.  So even as I started, I tried not to make it an issue because it really wasn't.  I just haven't had a lot of contact with glass eyes or the people they inhabit, so I didn't really know how to handle it at first.  I didn't know where to look for almost a week!

He gave me a break on my first day, telling me that I could go and have lunch.  I told him, "No, I'm okay, let's just do whatever we have to do next".  He said, "What? You don't like lunch or something?".  I replied, "No, but do you remember that talk in the interview we had, where I told you I NEEDED work as soon as possible, as much as possible?  Well, I was serious because I can't afford luxuries like lunch".

The point of this is Steve went up to his boss, the head man in charge of the club and got me an advance on my salary so I could eat.  He was that type of guy, I had been there less than a day.  He bought me lunch a lot on busy days after that.  I think he liked having me around because it meant that he didn't have to do all that work on his own and we got along really well.

I took that advance and went straight to the Pancake House....all you can eat $10, got myself a chocolate milkshake too, this is all at 10am by the way.  I don't think milkshakes were made for 10am but I made them turn that machine on.

Steve also provided me with a jacket for the cold and rainy mornings too (it was a promotional jacket from the club, but hey I'll take what I can get).  He thought I was crazy for riding my bike 5 miles there and 5 miles back everyday.  Sometimes he would throw my bike in the back and give me a ride if he were heading in that direction, to "give me a break" as he would say.  The man even got me some sunglasses for Christmas because mine had broken.  He was genuinely one of the nicest people I've met in Australia.

Again, I found this place was also traveller intolerant, as most places.  I found out that I was getting underpaid again. No holiday hours, no weekend rates, just a flat $18/hr.  Which isn't fair around Christmas time when all the Chest-icle cocktail dresses on display are talking about receiving $45/hr holiday wages.

I was told flat out by Steve that they can afford to do that because I'm a traveller and I'll take what I can get.  They do this to every traveller who works for them.  They don't care, they just restock travellers every week.  They hold an open call on Wednesdays whether they need staff or not.  They do it in case anyone quits or a traveller leaves abruptly (like I did; but to be fair, I told him what I was doing, he just didn't believe me).

Rugby 7's Tourney from my box

So that's what I did most of the week.  I also acquired the occasional temp shift with a company my room-mates worked for.  They would text or call and ask you if you wanted to work.  Places like the casino, or a stadium for concerts or sporting events.  So that was cool.  They called me a lot at first but when they found out I wasn't interested in cutting my hair, they stopped calling as much.

From where I was "working" at Foo Fighters

However, I did work at all three before I stopped     taking calls.  I did the casino one evening, worked   the Rugby Sevens Tournament one whole day, and got to work at/watch the Foo Fighters in concert.

All of these were for $20-30 a hour and none of them were very demanding.

The last place I worked for the temp agency was the casino and they told me the next time I showed up, I had better have my hair cut and a clean shaven face....needless to say I didn't show up "next time" or anytime after that.  Nobody tells me how to groom myself, not even my Mom (not that she would, she likes long-haired, scruffy Adam...but who doesn't?).




I've quit jobs for less than that, hell, I quit a job once to go see the movie "300".  I don't care, they're just jobs.  I work to live...I don't live to work.

May have moved a bit closer on my break!

Sometimes you find random topless photo shoots when you go exploring

That's what I did in Gold Coast, I looked for work and went to the beach.  When I found work, I did that and then went to the beach.  I borrowed a bike from a neighbor and rode it all around the suburbs of Gold Coast just exploring the territory.  Matt came to visit me the first week I was there before he flew back to the states and we went out then but other than that, I couldn't really afford to go out.

I had to save up money for Whitney to come visit.  I had anticipated already having a month's worth of money under my belt when she arrived and I didn't.  So I had to save a little extra, I spent the other times working out or in my room watching TV on my laptop to avoid the 3-headed monster in the living room.

These chicks were awful, 1 French, 1 Aussie, and 1 Canadian chick.  The Aussie girl, Tammy, was a "fake-nice"...you know the people who are really nice to your face but never tell the truth.  She lied a lot to my face, I don't like that.  The Canadian girl was just a complete airhead and nearly impossible to talk to.  She would get drunk and cry for no apparent reason, all while telling me the other girls hated her and she hated them.  The next day everything would be "okay".

Neither one of them were in comparison to the French chick though.  She was the absolute worst!

Nothing too common about that

I've since formed a different opinion of the French after meeting a lot of cool Frenchies in Sydney.  But before that it was a very low opinion I had of them.  This chick didn't help it either.  She was so stuck up her own ass it was amazing, we literally had NOTHING in common.  She had obviously never wanted for anything in her life, very pampered, all of them actually, so to see me with next to nothing and living a very commoners life was something they couldn't completely comprehend.

She would say things like, "Your noodles they smell so bad"(insert high-pitched annoying French accent).  To which I would reply, "And your French cheese smells good?".  All while thinking in my head, "Bitch, if it smells so bad, why don't you let me eat some of YOUR FOOD then, since I can't afford anything else".  Needless to say we didn't get along.

It didn't get too bad until the very end, I stayed there for 4 or 5 weeks.  The Canadian and the French girls moved out after 4 of those weeks (which they planned to do, not because of me) and I had to deal with the Tammy's new friend, Ursula...no that's not her real name but it is the name of the bad octopus chick from the "Little Mermaid" who she resembled and pretty much acted like, rolling around the apartment as if she owned the place.  The other chick was Aussie too but she was actually really nice and I liked her a lot.

I told them from the very beginning that Whitney was coming in mid-December and she'd be there for 1 month.  I said this before I moved in to make sure they were okay with that and that there wouldn't be any problems.

They were bad enough, that I CHOSE to leave this

They were fine with it at first, 2 weeks later it was, "well, she can stay but you have to pay extra".

Okay, fair enough, she is using the utilities and everything so that's reasonable.

2 weeks after that it was, "She can stay for 1 week, but you guys need to go travelling for the other 3 and pay extra".  So if you're doing the math at home, that's the last week I was there.  They told me this 3 days before she flew in.

So to summarize Whitney was flying in from Texas to see me for not only Christmas, but her birthday, my birthday, as well as New Years and not only do I not have a lot of money to go do stuff with her, now I don't even have a place for us to stay.  Great.

I may have jumped ahead of myself a little bit here.  But I basically told Ursula and the ugly step sisters to "F*%$ off" and I wasn't going to pay rent if they MADE us travel around.  The words "over-privileged c***" may or may not have been utilized.

I moved out the day after that argument went down.  I went to look out for hostels and trying desperately to scrape something together before Whitney came.  The other girl who was nice that moved in told me of these guys living in Miami, down the road.  They just moved into a 5 bedroom place and needed roommates.  She actually called them for me and told them the whole story.  They said Whitney and I could both stay there for a few weeks or until I got back on my feet.

The Miami crew

I was a little hesitant at first but it turned out to be okay.  Plus I didn't really have a choice. Petey and Dallas were really cool guys.  Petey was an electrician and Dallas...well, I don't think Dallas actually works.  He used to be a pro-surfer and told me he was a brick-layer, but always "had the day off"...all I ever saw him do was smoke weed, drink and pop pills..and this was continuous, whether it was at 5am, 10am or 10pm...so there's that.

Nice Summary of our time together

They were a lot of fun, if you don't have to be up at 6am everyday like I did.  The days I had off, we would all hang out and get drunk but these guys went on major benders.  Days at a time like they were at a festival with hippies or something.  Over New Years they went hard for 3 or 4 days.  Straight.  I don't know how they did it.  I thought I knew how to party...but these guys never stopped the party.

It was pretty remarkable.  Whitney came and everything was fine for the most part.  I worked, while she...well, I don't really know what the hell she did while I was at work all day.  I'd get off around 3-4pm most days and we'd go hang out after that.  It was a very exhausting time in my life with continuous stress but something that I believe made me a lot stronger.

It solidified a faith that I already had but I believe everything happens for a reason and I try to view the positive side of things.  Things could have went a lot different, a lot worse than they did and they looked really bad there for awhile but I know someone up there is looking out for me always...even if he does have a twisted sense of humor.

(I left these photos down here at the bottom so you could see a few of the bars that I had to stock EVERYDAY...no that's not the same photo, it's three continuous shots because that's how large it was across, you can't see the depth so even these don't give it justice...the place was massive.)