Roof Tilers

I had to move house. I asked around, looked on the net, and notice boards on campus and at my local supermarket. Bingo. Room for rent, close to amenities. Walking distance to work and central to everything in a suburb that’s as close to Melbourne as you get in Perth. My house mates? Two roof tilers from Queensland.

Now, I don’t want to stereotype but… these guys are/were classic. They spoke at three-quarter pace in jargon mostly unbefitting to be recorded (filth maaate…), filled our refrigerator up with XXXX Gold beer and every meal was take-away. Every day they had left for work by 6am, and most days (except for when they ‘got on the piss’ and staggered in at 6am to change and go to work) they were in bed, or snoring on the couch in front of the telly by 8.30pm. We kinda just co-habited until the last few weeks when I think we really bonded.

Bonding with M. Basically, I helped M make gravy one night when he decided to cook (a mound of pork chops and mash potatoes) and then we shared the experience of watching the Ali vs Forman fight on a Mohammed Ali documentary DVD he’d found in the shed. It was different from then on. He washed the dishes (once), brought toilet paper (?!) and even hit new heights in conversation -asking me how my day was a few times and chatting about real estate.

Bonding with J. Well, I think that happened the night I got home and he had just had a fight with his missus in Queensland and his (much younger) girlfriend had gotten mad at him for not staying at the pub longer. He was half way through telling me his woes when the girlfriend knocked on the door in tears cos she’d got dragged out of the pub by her hair by a security guard. J told her to calm down, go home and go to bed which rapidly escalated into a drunken screaming match down the street. My house mates. Damn I was proud. He then retreated to the shed for a ‘billy’ and his girlfriend spent the night in the slammer for going back to the pub and abusing, possibly even assaulting a police officer. Not sure- J couldn’t remember what the charge was. When they broke up he spent the night crying over a bottle of bourbon. When I was having relationship woes he knocked on my bedroom door, asked if I was alright, ascertained that I hadn’t been physically hurt and proceeded to pour me a ‘Jager bomb’ (which I quickly discovered was a shot of Jagermister spirits mixed with Redbull). I don’t believe that substance use or abuse fixes anything- but I felt cared about and thought it was a sweet gesture.

I cooked the a full Christmas roast chicken dinner for the boys the week before Chrissy. It was really nice. I’m going to miss them.

Jabs and Jellybeans

Jellybeans…I started this blog to document my trip to Malawi. For me, the journey began when the nurse at the Vaccination clinic here in Perth handed me a jellybean after administering several booster ‘third world country disease’ shots in my upper arm. Im not sure who decided that a jellybean makes the needle jab and ensuing dead arm tolerable… but thanks to them, my life has been punctuated with jellybeans.

Two –cholera, four, eight - Hepatitis, eleven -when all the girls in year seven had to get the measles mumps and rubella shots, thirteen, twenty – twinrix, rabies and japanese encephalitis before my first trip back to Indonesia as an adult, twenty-two – (paid for by UWA) to cover their proverbials before I went on a month long field trip to East Timor. Now I’m twenty-five about to embark on a new phase of life. A life changing adventure to Malawi – with all the protection modern medicine has to offer.

Do all journeys have detours? I guess if the goal and path are not set in stone there will inevitably be detours. I thought I would apply, get accepted, get my shots (see above), pack, and fly to Malawi. Instead, the departure date was set for 9 months down the track so I had time to raise the finances I need live for the next two years. First detour involved moving house.

Testing

Ever since I heard about blogging I thought it was cool- everyone gets a soapbox, and the audience is voluntary- cant go wrong :)
Where it does all go wrong is when it comes to computer skills- so lets see if this works.