So…. hehehe, twill be an interesting (to me anyway ;) post this one… So I wandered around the town on wednesday, getting CV’s printed off and photocopied and handing them in to different agencies… Most of which informed me that office work was not going to happen unless I sacrificed several goats and sheep to different spirits and slept inside a pentagon.
So that was a little annoying. Course Maeve pointed out today that I seemed to have applied to all the wrong agencies for getting office work… But sure I did get work as you will see…
Yup.. so after doing a word and excel test (and spelling and numerical tests) – actually for the record I’m ‘not productive’ at word… despite getting a 97% accuracy on the test…. in all fairness that’s simply concerned with how many shortcut keys you know…. Yes yes I’m making excuses but what they hey ;) come get me :D
So yes, where was I – ahhh yes – finished those tests and went upstairs to DKW personnel.. where I asked about office work and was again told that ‘it was quite slow at the moment’ Nice people though, two of them had toured Ireland and worked on Grafton St… so that was nice.. Funny really, someone told me that the Kiwis in Chch (yes, that the in acronym for Christchurch), are quite insular and not friendly… so far that’s defiantly not been what I’ve found.. they seem very friendly most of the time, and eager to help – I was wandering off to find my bike – oh yes – the puncture was fixed for free, which did restore my confidence in humanity somewhat… anyway – so I was looking at my street map, and a lady came up and tried to point me in the right direction…. you’d not get that in Dublin?! – or maybe you would and I’ve just not noticed..
So yes, DKW…. and I sorta kinda let myself get kinda enrolled as a laborer… ehem… they said that they didn’t need to contact my referees ;) mind you Adrian and Peter may even be reading this for all I know – if so – sorry you didn’t get the call asking if I am suitable for hard manual labour, just incase you do get a call sometime… by the end of reading this you can make up your own mind :D
And they even got me my IRD number – Revenue people… if you don’t have the number then they take 48Cent in every dollar off you.. which really isn’t great-smashing-super. Mind you, unlike OZ I believe we can claim tax back at the end.. which is kinda nice enforced savings really… So they got that sorted out, and my Hard Had, bright orange vest, and steel capped boots, – or steel caps to those of us in the trade. Which I currently am, and probably will for the next week until I decide that a weeks hard labour is enough for me…
So yes, back home, a bitta climbing – probably a dumb idea considering… and then earlyish to sleep for my 6:50am start the next day..
—————————Hard Labour Day Number 1—————–
So yes, today woke up nice and early so that I could get there on time… the place is a development up on a golf course called Clearwater.. apparently Tiger Woods played there a couple of months ago. As you do.
Actually they are going to be sweet apartments (well the ones I didn’t help build ;) when they’re finished. They have a huge garage at the bottom, and go up 1 flight of stairs to the front door, then a huge kitchen, looking over the lake (all the windows front onto the lake – oh and there’s a jetty out back), and then up again to a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom, and again the bath is right beside a window looking onto the lake.. very nice really…
So spent the morning movin’ stuff, and tidyin’ stuff and generally trying not to lift and twist, keep my back straight, and not carry too much. I can honestly say that doing these things correctly really isn’t trivial at all!, and also, that I really can now appreciate the value of a hard days work.. I know I’ve only done one, and I’ll try and stick it for a week and see how it goes.. but we’ll have to see, I don’t much feel like killing myself either…
So made neat little piles of wood.. though did learn one thing about stacking wood… if say you’re stacking a pile of 2*4s which are say, 8 ft long – something like that.. what you do is you pile them up, and then when it’s going to get unstable, you put two logs at right angles and repeat the process…. one way of stacking timber that’s a little more stable than making a big heap. So here you go readers… a bonus for getting this far if you ever want to stack timber ;)
Actually it was perfectly fine right up until Evil Carpenter Man came along. Well, he wasn’t strictly evil, though he did have the weirdest stare… – but this was after lunch so I had a bit of energy… oh yes, at lunch I learned that Kittry’s sister is 20 and has 5 kids…. I would protect identities, but I very much doubt they’ll be reading.. and anyway, it’s really something to be proud of, and she’s trying for a boy… So that’s nice.
Yes, so Mr Evil Carpenter Man came along with ….. yes….. some Real Work. Now I’m an honest laborer, but sheesh.. we could have used a third person in my humble opinion…. We were moving those Humungous Marble tabletops that people have in their kitchens, from down in a garage all they way up into the kitchen… the first few were fine, but goddamn… (sorry mum if you’re reading this ;) but they really were super heavy… and while I didn’t think of myself as particularly weak… I certainly know I’m not as strong as Aiden, the bloke who’s family left Kilkenny when he was 6 and was helping me lift these Things. He was completely sound, and I just felt sorry for him that he had to work with me for the day.. hopefully I’ve not completely broken the man… well, he’s probably about 23 actually.. most sound. Told me Auckland was the place to go for ‘pooter work, and that he’d just come back from working in Oz, and that he was totally on his way back after having to reside in NZ for 6 months (then he can go back and renew his visa)…
So yes, lifting those things (and yes I did bend my knees and not my back – for the most part anyway) was a complete nightmare…(so I hope anyone reading this who has marble topped counters Really Appreciates what they’ve got) I was ‘totally pumped’ by the end of it.. still, probably not a bad work out for finger strength as these things go, so that’s something to be thankful for… if it leads me to conquer the overhangs any easier I’ll be sorted… And I *think* I may be able to use my mp3 player too … but I’ll have to see about that one…
But, hopefully, if Maeve lands herself office work, and the ppl she applied to seemed to think that she’d not have to sacrifice anything to anyone, then I’ll defiantly quit the laboring and try to get work too… ’tis all a little mad really, but defiantly character building… I can feel my character getting bigger already…
My hands certainly have character
Nice people though, and that makes all the difference.
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