@ work

Hello Hello.

I've found a fulltime job in Darwin working as a kitchenhand :)

I've been working there the last 4 days and I can't complain about it. It earns ok, nice colleagues, and free food and drink. What else could I ask? :) Beats picking fruit by far. I had to quit my other job because the rosters overlap. But this job's better anyway, so no regrets :) I mainly do the washing up, keep the kitchen clean, do some basic food preparation and run around doing stuff for the chefs. Nice and easy.

Evy is having a harder time finding a good job. She's mainly ended up with different parttime jobs that are hard to combine. For the moment she's working as a waitress in The Deck Bar where she only gets about 20 - 25 hours per week. It's frustrating for her, but I'm sure something will pop up in the next few days though. Siegfried found a job pruning fruit trees on an island north of Darwin. Friday they are taking him there with a small plane. It looks like a fun job. But like almost all harvest labour it is not payed on an hourly basis, but is strictly contractwork. Meaning you could make very little if the conditions aren't right.

In the meantime Darwin has moved into the dry season. They only have two seasons here: the dry and the wet. The temperature is about 30 - 35 degrees all year round. In the wet it's very humid and generaly not a nice place to be in weatherwise, but in the dry it's just nice, sunny and hot all day long. The town intself is ok. It has some lovely green patches and a few beautiful secluded beaches. One other thing that catches one's eye here in the evenings is that there are huge pitch black bats roaming the skies at night. Never seen anything like'm. They're about triple the size of the bats we saw flying around in Sydney. Speaking of native wildlife, there's plenty of gecko's and funny lizards running around here too.

We have started counting down to our departure date, the 21st of july. After finishing work we'll only have about 5 weeks left to travel. Not a lot keeping in mind the area of Australia we still have to cover in that amount of time. After leaving Darwin we will be travelling to Kakadu National Park for a few days. After that we'll head into Queensland, home to the Whitsunday islands, lush rain forest, pictoresque beaches and loads of deadly animals to look out for :) After travelling in Queensland we'll have to check how much time we've got left. If it's possible we might take a plane over to Perth in Western Australia, rent a car there for a week or so to explore the area, and then fly back to Sydney where we'll depart for home. I'm not counting on it though. We'll see how we go. If we don't make it to Western Australia we'll just have to come back another time :)

SOS Pearl Jam tickets

After years of waiting for the legendary grunge band Pearl Jam to do a gigg in Belgium (I got close a few years ago, but they cancelled for Rock Werchter at the last moment), they finally decided to come along to the "Sportpaleis" in Antwerp the 30th august 2006. So yeah, that's great and all... but the problem is that all the tickets are already sold out. I tried to get some tickets via a friend in Belgium, but sadly when he got round to it they already sold out :(

I was hoping people reading this could maybe keep their eyes open for 1 or 2 (preferably) tickets for the concert. Maybe you know someone who knows someone, or you just happen to see an ad somewhere with someone selling their tickets... you know, that sort of stuff. I wouldn't even mind much paying more than the official price via the black market. It took Pearl Jam about 15 years to finally come to Belgium, so I am certain this will be my only chance for a very long time.

So if anyone can help, please (pretty please on my knees) do! :) Just leave a comment, or mail me at dhendrickx@gmail.com

Jobhunting in Darwin

I've been looking for a job the last week or so. It's been slow for the moment with all these cyclones, public holidays and stuff. But I've managed to get a job in a bar&grill called "Ducks Nuts" (it is more posh than it sounds). I've worked there the past weekend, and yesterday the manager said he was happy with my work so I got offered the job. Only downside is that it isn't for as many weekly hours as I'd hoped, so starting tomorrow (today being 1st of may, public holiday) I'm gonna be looking for a second job. Fingers crossed :)

Evy and I have moved in to a room in a shared accomodation style house. We moved in yesterday. It's a whole lot cheaper than staying in a hostel, and as we're looking to work in Darwin it makes more sense to move in to a more comfortable form of accomodation than a hostel.

Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes the next few days.