Cleaning

I want to explain something. I've always been viewed as a messy person, my bedrooms, at times have been known to resemble the aftermath of a nuclear attack if viewed from inside topman, clothes everywhere with an occasional bit of carnage. Having said that, I've always maintained that, especially as far as shared rooms go, I'm as tidy as the rest of the people in the house are. So, when I lived in 'the Manse' along with three other, equally messy guys, the house was kind of a mess. Ok, not just kind of, it was possibly the messiest house I've personally ever lived in. The next house I moved into wasn't any better, but that's because it was with the same bunch of guys and when we got to the house, there were, what appeared to be small molehills in the middle of each of the downstairs rooms so we were already onto a loser with that one. Now, the next time I shared a house with Phil was about two years later. This time there were some tidier people in the house and so, the shared rooms were basically kept clean and tidy.
Fast forward another couple of years and again I'm sharing a house with Phil and (for the first time) Jenny. Jenny, as I've already mentioned is impressed with the way I've kept things clean and done the washing up. Admittedly, this has partly been to do with the level of boredom I experience when I'm not working at the moment which I still haven't found an answer to. I even found myself unable to properly get into the cricket today, although having said that I've still got a running commentary going as I type this. So today I have cleaned 'Monica style' the bathroom and the kitchen. I mean, these rooms are CLEAN!
I need help! I need a job (please let me get this part time job!). I need a girlfriend. I need something to distract me from my cycle of boredom that at this moment looks like it can only lead to me becoming *gulp* domesticated!

Something To Do

Despite working two jobs at the moment, with one of them being a Saturday job (the bar) and one of them being odd days (the youth inclusion work) it means that I have a lot of spare time with nothing really to do in it. Because of this I've found myself doing lots of washing up at the flat, to the point where Jenny is holing me up as a good example to Phil when it comes to housework, and who thought that would ever happen! I've also watched a whole series of Scrubs in two days. I've read two books, 3 graphic novels, the whole run of new X-Men and the back of a packet of cornflakes. I desperately need to think of something to do to fill the days until I get a full time job (hopefully that won't be too long if the YIP thing comes through).
Maybe I could use this time productively, I could write a book or a song or, well that's all I can think of to do. If you can think of anything I could actually fill this time with, you should let me know.
On the other hand, I've still got another 3 seasons of Scrubs I can watch again.

Late Night Chats

What is it about late night chats that make them so much more interesting than the normal conversations that you have? It's 2:00 Saturday night (or more accurately Sunday Morning). I've just finished an 8 hour shift at the bar. Some of the guys there have actually been working since 10:00 the previous morning. We're all knackered, we all just want to collapse. But someone suggests 'a quick drink' before we go home and before I know what's going on, I'm looking at the clock and realising that it's 4:45 in the morning. Over the last 3 hours we've gone through funny animal stories (one day I'll tell you my squirrel story, but I'll save that for when I can't think of anything else to write), our lives where we grew up, the problems of race relations in South Africa and New Zealand, the problems with the bar we work at (and how to fix them) and various other topics of conversation (I'm sure music and film came up at one point). It was a great night, even though I got home knackered and collapsed in bed til mid Sunday afternoon.

As a side note, don't you hate it when you're in a conversation and you feel that someone somewhere is entirely missing the point but you're not sure if it's you or not. When we were talking about South Africa and Apartheid, one of the guys there suggested that things were actually better under apartheid because there was no corruption, people generally had a better standard of life and that even lots of black South Africans thought so. This was one of those horrible moments when I realised I just didn't know enough about the situation and could only stutter 'erm's' and 'I'm not sure about that's' in a very English way.

London Calling

I've been in London exactly a month now. It's been a mad, strange, fun, unsettling, strange (did I say that already?), great month.

The work I've been doing for YIP (youth inclusion project) has been excellent. I'm working with some great people and some wonderful kids. Ok, sometimes the kids want to tear each others heads off with their bare hands, but generally they're really good. In fact, I've enjoyed it so much that I've just applied for a permanant part time job with them which would mean (if I manage to actually get it!) that along with the two sessions a week I'm already doing I'd basically be wroking for them full time, which would be excellent.

My direct boss at YIP is a guy called Joe V who I've met a couple of times and he's a top guy. He's into some really great music and seems to know everyone, from Bloc Party, one of the actors from Garden State (the girl at the party that Zach Braff gets off with if you're interested) to Jeff Buckley's bass player. He reads NME just to look at funny pictures of his friends. Anyway, like I said, he's a great guy and we've already spent a couple of nights out together and been to a gig (where his friend blagged us all in for free to a sold out venue). Plus, when I mentioned that I was thinking of going out to LA at some point he offered to get me in touch with his actress friend, so Joe is now a friend for life, whether he likes it or not.
In fact, to be fair to all the new guys I've met, they're all top guys. Spent all day yesterday playing Football Manager with Sparky and all evening playing poker with a bunch of the guys (including one of the guys who'll be interviewing me for the part-time job, YIP's all a bit incestuous which will hopefully be good news for me).

Other than that everything else is carrying on nicely. My job all last week involved being in a park with 30 odd kids playing cricket and football (which is obviously a good thing of you're me). The bar jobs got very annoying. I showed up for work at 10:00 this morning to be told I wasn't needed til 6 and they'd lost all my details AGAIN! Plus, the tips have gone from £80 in the first week to a constant £30 which is still great, just not as great.

Anyway, still haven't got the internet sorted at my new place, but the guy who knows the password for the wireless network gets back this week, so hopefully I'll be logged onto that soon as this is the first time I've actually been able to get on the internet for about 10 days. Hope everyone's doing ok and I'll post again as soon as I have wither anything interesting to post (unlikely) or just some spare time when I'm bored (which is, lets face it, much more likely).

Here's A Tip...

Think about it for a second... Have you ever tipped a barman/bargirl, ever?
No, neither have I.
You may be wondering why on earth I'm going on about this. Well, last Saturday I started a new Saturday job as a way of making a bit of extra cash. I'm working in a bar/nightclub. It's a huge place with 4 bars, two dancefloors and two giant screens. It's also completely run and frequented by South Africans, Kiwi's and Aussies to the point where it's possible I was the only English person in the whole place. It was a mad, 12 hour shift and I was completely knackered by 1:30 when we'd finally closed down and cleaned everything and got round to the staff drinks.
However, it was all worth it because I made £80 in tips! That's right £80 just for serving drinks. No food or waitering, just working at a crazily mad bar. And I still get my actual wages! I don't know whether this is a Southern Hemisphere thing, or just something that we Brits don't do, but I'm glad that I'm working in a South African bar now!