Dec 20 - Interview for Brennan and Applications for Me

This morning Brennan had an interview for an accounting job. As a show of solidarity, I slept until he returned from it. Apparently it went quite well, with the interviewer taking him around to talk to several people in the office. Now he gets to play the waiting game to see if he gets the job. Hopefully he is successful, because someone has to put food on this table and it sure isn't me yet. I read some more of my book and got out of bed well before noon for some cereal and a banana. I evidently still require some form of employment, and the online applications for marketing and office work have not been successful in any manner. So I changed my strategy and figured I'd go see if there were retail stores in the downtown malls that were hiring. I walked over to market city and wandered around and saw that a fancy dress clothes store called Politix had a sign up needing a sales associate. I went in and asked about it and the guy said "bring me a resume and the job is yours." Cool, I said, I'm on a working holiday visa, is that alright? "Oh, I dunno then, you'll have to go talk to the boss at the Pitt Street location about it then." Works for me, I'll head that way. It seems like people here are so anti-traveler or anti-foreigner that as soon as they realize you aren't an Aussie, it's like get the hell out of my store. Seems really weird, because I can't imagine any employer in Canada firstly even asking if someone is a citizen, and secondly, being rude to them and immediately disqualifying them from a job simply because of that. Such a different mindset over here. Regardless, I marked it down in my notebook and moved onto the next mall, where I found a semi-casual, semi-dressy clothing place called Marc's and a Hugo Boss store that both had signs in the window needing workers. So I marked down all these places and marched back to the hostel. Tried on my new shoes again and decided they were too small when I'm wearing socks. So I ventured out over to Market City to see if they would exchange them for a larger size. They had no issues and I brought my new size 11 shoes back to the hostel, which didn't crunch my toes inside them. I doctored up the resume to target clothing store jobs, printed off three copies and off I went again. Dropped off resumes at Marc's and Hugo Boss to the people working (neither of the managers were in) and was promised that they would pass along my resume to the bosses tomorrow. Then I went to search out the Pitt Street Politix store. Found one in the Westfield mall and told the girl I was told to come talk to the person here by the people at the other store. She asked me a few questions and then told me she didn't do hiring and to go to another Politix store in the adjacent mall to talk to the boss. So I used her vague directions and wandered around until I found the other store. I went in to ask for the boss and was informed he had left for the day. The girl asked me bluntly if I had retail experience. I said yes. She asked where. I said Canada. She said "ohhhh, I see. I'll pass the resume along to the boss...thanks for coming in." Great, thanks for your time (sarcasm but I sounded sincere) and walked back to the hostel. So three applications, none of which seemed all that promising.

Had a kebab on the way back that was so delicious and satisfying since I hadn't eaten anything besides the cereal this morning. Went to a discount bookstore by the hostel and picked up two new books: the autobiographies of William Shatner and Craig Ferguson. Read a bit more of my first book and chatted with our Canadian roomie, then went for groceries. B had a kebab for supper on the way and we picked up a decent little selection of lunch and supper foods that should last a few days. Got back, put away the food and I finally finished my book (victory!). Killed some time and hung around and listened to our other roomie (a 48 year old lawyer also from Canada but living in Australia) talk about stuff for a while like to go work in a mine or pick fruit because this and that and such. And he rambled on about taxation and stuff until we all lost interest and then he left to go check out the common room. Read a bit of each of my new books, neither of which seem to be written with the same level as the Chili Peppers book (probably because it was a story told by one of today's best lyricists instead of actors or comedians) but these look like they could have some good humour in them at least (whereas Scar Tissue was fairly dark). The forecast for tomorrow is sunny and 26 (feel free to hate us now) so we plan on going to Bondi beach. I may even learn to surf. We'll see how to waves are breaking.