The Market and Chinatown

This week I went to the Hay Market and to Chinatown.  Market City (Hay Market) is a underground huge market that feels like a flea market but it new stuff they are selling and not too many hand crafted projects.  This place was huge! 

Plus it is right there in Chinatown! 

I didn't really buy a lot just a few gifts.  Everything is WAY cheaper there too.  I will go back before I leave Sydney.  It is only open Wednesday through Sunday.  I went on a Thursday and it was still really busy!  I can only imagine how busy Saturdays and Sundays are. 
It seems like around here people don't work Saturdays or Sundays.  A lot of businesses are closed and even some train stations are not open.  Heck in Bondi Junction everything closes at 6 PM during the week and your lucky if any of those places are open on the weekends.  OK the malls are open but that is about it. 

Exploring

On a more positive note recently I have been able to explore the city a little more.  I live in the community Bondi Junction.  Sydney is HUGE so it is split up into communities just so it is easier for a cab to get you home or for you to get mail from a loved one ect.  Bondi Junction is an interesting community.  I am about a half mile to main train and bus stop, 2 huge malls, movie theatre, coffee shops, and anything else you would need is all within walking distance from my house.  Which I like!  A lot of the buildings here have that old feel to them. 

One night all the outlets in the house were not working and my laptop had died.  I wanted to at least charge it somewhere so I could chat with my family.  They have Internet places here but not free Wifi.  These are the prices to use the Internet... 

The other day I went to Bondi Beach and walked around when the sun started going down.  It was beautiful.

The moon started rising





Bondi beach is not very big which was actually very nice to see.  Not a lot going on there, I thought that was cool. 

 

Suck it up...

Wow!  emails have come back and basically I have been told to just suck it up and deal with what I got.  O.K. maybe not in so many words but that is the message I got.  Now here I am trying really hard to "suck it up"! 
I am not one for doing things I don't like to do.  If I don't like something I change it, go somewhere else.  Life is way too short to be miserable.  Sadly in this circumstance I can not just change it or go somewhere else.  I have to stay where I am at to finish school and get my degree!  How do you tell a wondering mind to be still? 

It doesn't help that I am a little homesick.  I knew I would be homesick a bit and I can handle that part.  It is just lining my mind and my heart to get through this shit that I got myself into.  It will be worth in the end.....right?

I have been told by everyone in the kitchen that I am working in that this kitchen is the worse kitchen any of them have ever worked in.  Not to let this kitchen crush my dreams of an aspiring baker/pastry Chef.  There are so many wonderful kitchens out there and this one just happens to be shit.  So not only am I doing culinary, getting yelled at for not knowing what I am doing, but also I am in apparently one of the worse kitchens these Chefs have ever been in.  The executive Chef-20 years experience, Pastry Chef-5 years, and on of the other lead Chefs-18 years.  That is a lot of years and a lot of kitchens to compare. 

Cala Luna

Well, I started my job!  So far the first week has been a complete and total let down.  I am miserable.  I feel let down and completely misguided.  So far this experience has let me down.  Cheated even!  My first week I got yelled at a lot for not really knowing what I was doing, but in all fairness they have had me doing all culinary shit not pastry.  Chef doesn't have a schedule he just tells me that night to come the next morning.  Damn I can honestly say I hate this!  I find my self completely sad and regretting my decision.  I have been emailing my contacts here and back in the US to get this all straightened out.  I am waiting on some responses.  What did I get myself into?  How can I fix this?  Is it bad  I am wishing time to pass so quickly?  What am I going to do?

A Place to Live...

      8 days in that hotel was 6 days too long.  It was $45 a night to stay there.  I finally got some responses from some of the emails I sent out for a place to live.  I went to the first place and was kind of excited at first.  Private room on the second floor.  The hosts was an Asian man with a family of 5 plus 2 other renters.  He had a separate kitchen and bathroom outside for his renters as to keep us away from his family.  I just didn't get a good feel for the area when I was walking around.  I knew I would walking late night and I wanted to feel safe. 
     On to the next place...I emailed an ad and the lady emailed me back and said come by the office and we can show u some places and prices.  I wondered around the city a bit before I came across the office.  I went up to the 5th floor not knowing what to expect but hoping to find a cheaper place to live.  The lady I talked to was so nice and very friendly.  She was from Brazil.  She showed me pictures and told me how all of it works and it sounded pretty good. The best part was I could move in that day which was great because I had to work the rest of the week about 13 hours a day.   She showed me pictures of a shared house and a shared room.  I did not want to share a room originally but I was finding the rent was so expensive I just could not afford to just rent a private room.  Everything here is done by week.  Most places I was finding was 250 or more a week but this place was 170 a week.  Still not great but better.  I signed the paperwork, got the keys, headed back to the hotel, packed my shit  (which was a good thing because I had just gotten 2 more roommates in the hotel room), got a cab and moved in to this crazy house.  When I arrived the cabby dropped me off down the street from the actual house.  He threw my luggage out of the cab, on the curb and drove off, but not before charging me $45 for the damn ride.  It was $4 more than the meter said because we had to cross the bridge and on the bridge is a toll.  What the Hell!

Shared room! My side is on the right

   
 I stacked my luggage and dragged in down the street to the house.  It was dark and a little scary when I walked in.  I unlocked my door and the my roommate was there but she was resting.

The dining room

The kitchen

  I felt so bad for waking her up.  She was so nice though, she helped me roll my bags into the room and I asked her where I could buy sheets and pillows.  She said she was planning on going shopping in a few mins if I wanted to go.  So I got my stuff unpacked (mostly).  We headed out.

the shared background with the neighbor house (on left)

The washer.  $1.20 to wash and NO dryer!

 She told me all about the house and the area, how to get places and where to catch the bus.  We went to the grocery store first then to Kmart.  She even helped me carry some of my stuff home.  She said she would cook dinner while I made my bed and got a little more settled.  How awesome.  I thought for sure I was going to like it here.  

The plan...

Before arriving in Australia my contact here was suppose to line up a Pastry Chef job for as well as line up transportation from the airport to the hotel they were putting me up and supplying me a phone.  All this was part of the job package I purchased for $1000.00 as well as a few other details like being my constant contact while I was here, and a reference for me to find a place to live.  Up until about 4 weeks before I was suppose to leave I still had no job offer. I had to really push my contact to find me a job.  Finally she came through for me.  She found me a job at Cala Luna as a Pastry Chef Apprentice.  I was so excited and by the look of the website I knew I was in for a GREAT experience.  I purchased my plane ticket, found a great deal actually- $800 one way.  I flew out Monday July 2nd and arrived in Sydney on Wednesday July 4th at 6 AM!  The first flight was AMAZING!  I had an entire row to myself, roomy seats, movies to watch with tvs in the seat in front of you.  That flight was from Portland to L.A. I arrived in L. A. and had a 4 hour layover.  My next flight from L.A. to Sydney was 15 hours long!  This flight was still good but I was in the very back of the plane where it was only a 2 seater row.

 Still very roomy seat and the lady next to me was from Sydney so we chatted a bit and since this flight was a red eye most of the passengers slept most of the time.  They feed us dinner about 1 hour after we got on the plane and breakfast about 2 hours before we landed.  The food was surprising good considering it was plane food. 

I arrived in Sydney, went through customs and I looked for the person who was suppose to pick me and he/she was no where to be seen.  So here I was in a very large crowded airport in another country with 3 pieces of luggage and didn't know what to do next.  I found the airport help desk and asked her where to go and what to do.  She called some numbers and sent me to the other end of the airport pick up and to wait for a Chinese man with glasses.  Geez that sure narrowed it down haha!  I stood there until about 7:45AM and finally a tall white guy had a dry erase board with my last name on it.  He was the arranged pick up for me.  he took to Glen Ferrie Lodge (which was the hotel they put me up at) carried my luggage up 2 flights of stairs and left.  I walked in the door and told the guy at the counter who I was and asked if I could check in.  His response was, check in is not until 2PM.  I asked him what I was suppose to do that I had been traveling all night and I was exhausted.  He let me check and he put me on the ground floor next to laundry room and near the street.  Lets just say it was so noisy there.  I stayed there about 8 days before I found a place to live.    

Lost ideas...

I had this great idea to finish out my Portland blog and add all these awesome pictures of all the cakes I did, when my parents came to visit me, our trip to Cali to see my sis and nephew and just some more really awesome things that happened in Portland.  Yes I am/was very behind on both my blogs and I was ready to update all the way up to the very end of school and work, but my computer (which had all my pictures since leaving NC) broke.  Yes BROKE!

 Somehow where you plug in the power source is where it broke.  I have no idea how this happened or when it happened just that it happened.  I was VERY upset about possibly losing all my pictures but then I got to thinking I was way more upset about not having a computer to skype with my family when I left for Australia.  I called around got quotes to get my computer fixed; local places, known places, and what have you and I got a range of quotes from $150 to $900 and a time frame of 5 days to 2 weeks.  I didn't have that kind of time.  I was about to move to the other side of world in 4 days.  The only think I could think of was to price another computer to see if I could find one cheap.  Luckily Oregon does not have sales tax so I was able to get another computer for 300 buck-a-roos!  Oh yeah!  I went out and got it and then the next day I flew to Sydney Australia!

 It didn't even feel real.  I felt like it was all just a dream and I was going to wake up and realize none of it had really happened.
Here I sit in Sydney Australia wondering how did all this happen...