Reality is sneaking up on me

The past few week has been weird. I can't explain why or how. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened to me. I've just been doing my thing, working, meeting friends and potential new ones too.

I've been listening to some more Henry Rollins, who, as some of you may know, is my personal hero. What he says and how he sees things is just, for lack of a better word: amazing. He's just no bullshit, straight forward, and is pretty self aware of his position in the world and what a person is capabale of. Not just any person, but EVERY person. His basic philosophy basically is that if you want to do something, go out and do it. The only person holding you back is usually yourself. The fear of the unknown can stop someone. The uncertantity of a new situation. And I couldn't agree with him more. Just the other day I wished I had moved from Stockholm a lot earlier. Not so much to maybe another country. But to another part of Sweden. Like moving up north, to where the cool Swedes are hanging out (yes, I am more biased to the Norrlänningar). Because as I've said before and as I will continue to say, the people up north have their shit together.

But let's get back on topic.

My brother had send me a link, or better, a copy-paste of someone else's blog which really got to me, for the better, and I'm really grateful for him sending it to me. Here's the original post: Blog Maverick: Success & Motivation.

Right now, I'm without a doubt, in a bit of rut. Nothing too deep, but not the greatest place in the world. Now, don't think that I have been lying to you in my previous posts about everything being honky doory. It still is. However, it isn't the way I...planned it to be. No. Envisioned it. That's what I wanted to say.

What did I envision: get a well paying job (compared to NZ), play paintball every weekend with a Pro team, and be able to save up money at the same time. What's the reality: I have two part time jobs which help me get by (borderline survive and live), the definition of Pro here is not what I expected (it's a low end Division 1 team by European standards), and I don't save up a lot of money here.

Now then, I can definitely take some blame for not getting the job, but my weak excuse is that I thought with my expierence, that I would be able to get a job which I'm qualified for. So, I only looked for jobs which I'm qualified and not for jobs I didn't want to do (pizza maker, cleaner, McDonalds, etc). And, as I probably said before, my stupid visa status isn't the correct one (from an employers point of view). Anyway, to the point, I now take every small money making scheme that comes my way. From stripping off wall paper for a boss (which I did) to resizing photos for my room mate. No matter how tired I am. I keep going for it.

However, today was another story. Since, I do the same thing at both pizzerias, it's a bit monotonous, to say the least. And so, when the it was 19.30, I was contemplating asking the boss if I could go at 20 instead of 21. I started to argue with myself to just hang in there for another hour, at least half an hour. Time is now 20.15. The argueing continues:

Side A: Come on, do it for the money, you'll be able to have more fun in Sweden!

Side B: But I've been doing this all day now!

A: Pussy boy!

B: And?

A: Do you want to stop wingeing about money or not?! It's only a half hour more.

B: But I worked that extra day on Thursday, that covers the hour I'll miss now.

Side B won. And now in retrospect, I regret taking that half hour off. I'm now 7 AUD short for next week. Damn. What did I learn? Suck it up, and keep on going.

My goal is to have enough money to support myself in Sweden while I'm over there, at least to have about 10k SEK. Sounds like a lot, but I know I can do. I KNOW I can. Because I've done it before on such a shitty wage (NZ). It just comes to prioritizing and focusing on the finishing line.

Also, want to try to play one small tournament before I leave. But that's going to be in about three weeks, and should set me back about 300 AUD. But we'll see how much I've saved up by that time. I have a funny feeling that I won't have enough money to both meet my Sweden goal and play the tournament. Priorities. Always in the way. This tournament would be again over in Moama, and only 3 man, which is seperate from XF, so it would be a lot more fun.

On the brighter side, I no longer have any debts. Well, the ones here in Australia at least. The other one isn't worth mentioning. So just that has taken a big chip off my shoulder.

Oh well. That's it boys and girls.

Mental diahria: This Mik Rougnar character that has posted some comments to some of my posts, I know I've heard that name before. I swear it's an alias for some on in my family. It's either for my uncle or cousin. I just can't remember.

The Blue Mountains

I went up to the Blue Mountains today. It was something I really needed.

I found this map on the net, and thought it would be cool to do, so I did. I got lost a definite one time, and then half on not too sure of my bearings. Obviously, I made it out alive. Otherwise I wouldn't be writting this.

I will be going back, but to do a 3 day hike. We'll see what develops.

Just found this one, super keen on it.

Here are the photos: Oz - Azul Montanas

Being a good host(ile).

Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow we're going to get our first Couch Surfer staying with us, which is going to be interesting say nontheless. I've learnt it's fun to see things from the other side of things. I've surfed many a couches relative to what I've hosted surfers. A bit nervous of course, but excited.

Keep ya posted.

Pointless

I was bored, and gave myself a photo assignment: Sit in one spot, and take photos I think are interesting. Here's what I got.

Oz - New Photo Assignment

Sushi - a'la Photoshop

Before:

After:

Tell me what you think.

That's The Bassline

Howdy doody y'all!

Life in the Big Smog (aka Sydney) continues. People are coming and going all the time, and recently three friends have just left, all heading north (although, sadly, not together) to the heat, which is understandable. Right now, at this very second, I'm pretty cold, and at night, it's worse. So much worse. The concept of insulation and double glazed glass eludes every single Australian architect, and most importantly, housing complexes. Maybe the more recent building have it, like 1-2 years old, and if not, the foreman should be shot. And because of a recent stupid descision, I now really feel the cold.

For the summer I was shaving my head for the heat, and now I decided to grow it out for my brothers wedding, and also for the winter. And since I'm trying to save money, I went for the cheapest alternative, and hopefully most interesting. Which it was. I was told of a student salon where the students work (read: practice) on clients. Only for 7 AUD and a small signature on a waiver. The student was doing ok, you could tell he needed some more practice, but when he was all done the front and sides didn't look all that. If I gave it week, it would of been perfect. So, I asked to see the back. Holy sweet me. Take a trimmer, put on the number two guard, and then take off all the hair on the back of your head. That's what he did. I told him to take it all off. I get back home and see that there's a small strand of hair sticking off the top of my head. Typical. I whip out my own trimmers and have a go at it. What do I get? A nice square empty patch on my head. Sah-weet. I had the wrong guard on. So, I take off the rest, down to a number one. And now. I. Am. Freaking. Freezing. At. Night.

To stay warm now, I crawl litterally under my blankets, and make a small hole for my mouth. However, when I got back home from a party, my flatmate had been nice enough to put the heater in my room (and turned on) so my room was nice and toasty when I crawled into bed. Good ending to a great night.

Not to sure if I mentioned this before, but I have a second J.O.B now at another pizzeria just down the road form me. It gives me more money, and we'll leave it at that.

What's happening next, no clue. We'll see. And now you can see the photos I took from the party here.

Colourful randomness during g(r)ay days

Sucked in. That's usually what you say if something has happened opposite to someone's predictions - usually for the worse. How does this relate to me? Meh, not a whole lot, it would be more like sucked-not-quite-in-but-close.

My time here in Sydney isn't bad at all, but I'm not pulling in the money that I thought I would be with my amazing 7 hours a week at the pizza joint I'm working at. I've now got another job at another pizza joint, and an interview at a bar (which my boss really talked me up, saying I know heaps of different cocktails - I'm buggered). So what does this boil down to? I might end up leaving Sydney to hang out with my French Canadian friend from the cherry farm over in WA instead. Why you may ask? Because, at the moment, I am going minus every day/week/month in the same place as I was before. Where I'm at physically isn't a bad place, but it seems like it finacially won't be changing any time soon, which is a real drag. Big time. So, with my move over to WA, it would allow me see and do new things, while looking for a job with a friend of mine who is absolutely amazing at living a cheap life style: sleeping in parks, showering in public showers, etc. Something which I would be more than happy to do, because it would be a shit load better than going to a job which doesn't pay my rent, only partially my food, and I would most likely learn a lot from it. A LOT. He's currently driving down south from Broome at the moment, and will be in Perth sometime this week and he said he'll call me and we'll see what his plans are. What will stop me from going would be is if I can actually start earning some more money, if not. And if I don't make any more $$$, then I'll probably jump over the continent to do some crazy stuff over there and go bankrupt like everyone in this country. Yippee.

Another the greyer side of things, my flatmate has placed the deposit for the store he wants, so all he needs to do now is sign some paper work, lodge and have his his A form approved by the local council (gives him the right to modify the building), start on the interior of the store, and by the start of August, it should be up and running. Fact of the matter is that I'm running on the presumption that the store won't be open for when I return to Australia, and if that is the case, then we'll have to figure something else out. Real quick.

My older brother was here last week, which was an unusual experience. It wasn't so much as a surprise to see him on the otherside of the world with me, it was more of like, why wouldn't he be here. I'm pretty sure I would react like that to pretty much anyone I know from back in Sweden coming over here for what ever reason. I digress. We had dinner with our old family friends from England/USA, and also did some minor site seeing along Darling Harbour, Harbour Bridge, Opera House, and the Botanical Gardens. And Jon was pretty lucky to come to Sydney when he did because some crazy nut got the ingenious idea to light up all of Sydney with amazing colours and designs on all of important building around (Opera House, Museum of Contemporary Art, etc). Quite an amazing sight. I took some photos of it, which you can check out on my Picasa later on. Also got to meet an interesting character too, one of Herk's work companions, we'll call him Cyborg, since I don't really like to use peoples real names. Anyway, Cyborg told us a story of a small trip he did to a Columbian prison while doing his tour in South America. Now, he did NOT get put into the prison, he merely went to visit someone there. Ok, so let's get it clear, Cyborg did NOT get arrested in Columbia...well, that's what he told us anyway....hmmmm...yes. Well, really cool dude nontheless, with an awesome story.

Just starting thinking about when I was in the car with my flatmate (ok, his nickname is now Kraut Fighter or KF for short), and strongly believes that I should drop my ideas of studying nursing, and actually start studying multimedia. Primarily because we so many discussions on the topic. I find mulimedia very interesting, but not passionate about it. I then tried to explain to him that if he were disecting his car engine every day, that I would be standing right next to him, trying to absorb as much information as possible. I've concluded through my time in Sweden (after SSHL: Shit Shoveling Hitler Lovers that is), and especially after the army, I love to learn new things, things that I have interest in, and even in random things, like how to setup an anti-freeze system for cherries, or even how to setup and run a hostel/business. It mainly boils down to making me more useful and functional. I can't really explain it, and also, I've learnt that you can learn at least one thing from every person you meet in your life. Be it completely useless facts to revolutionary ways of how to percieve the world around you. Hmm...yeah. So far, I've only met one person with my same views on a lot of things, and that's this guy who I might go and travel with in WA. It was always fun having conversations with him.

Yeah, and on that note, I'll leave you to it to check out some of my photos: Oz in HDR (two new photos) and Blip'n Blop.

Ciao-ou-ou-ou-ouuuuuu.