Critical Mass my Ass and a bunch of other stuff...

Working for The Australian Red Cross so far has been a "piece of piss" (British/Australian for "easy"). I pretty much get paid $22/hr to open and sort post, answer the occasional phone call and data entry cheque and credit card donations into the computer. I don't have nearly as much time to do fun things but what a great feeling when that first cheque got deposited into my Australian account. The most money I have earned yet since being here. Not to say that money makes me happy, just eases my mind and as my friend Damien says...provides me with more opportunities. One of the great things about working for the Red Cross is that we get free stuff that people donate. For instance, last week we got $60 concert tickets for free! On the roster was Ben Lee, The Music and The Fritellis. Here is a pic of Ben Lee that I took (dedicated to Andrea)...

and here are the people I went with. David (Australian) is from work and Nas (Kenya/England) I met through my friend Karen (next pic)...

and here is my good friend Karen from work who is from Leeds (North England). She has the best laugh!

This is my new friend Tim. He is from New York and he is wonderful. He has been a vegan for 8 years (started off as a joke and he just never stopped), he's really into bikes (brings his bike "Max" with him all over the world), has hitch hiked through Europe and almost all the way to Pakistan and he loves to go dumpster diving (which we tried with one failed attempt to do already although I'm sure there will be many more). I know you're probably all thinking "ew...gross!" but really it's a great way to get free, perfectly fine food that grocery stores and bakeries discard even though it is still totally edible. Most of the time the food is still wrapped in its packaging and therefore not messy at all. Here's some more info if you're interested. Don't judge me! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumpster_diving

Since Tim is into bikes and I finally have one, we decided to go to Critical Mass together http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass. I was very excited since I ride in Mass in Toronto all the time but had not, as of yet, participated in an Australian CM. Here I am getting psyched to ride...

and here is Tim and his super sexy water melon painted fixed gear road bike. Look how excited he is!!!

Here is a pic of my super cute vintage ladies road bike (kind of reminds me of yours Andrea, only Red).

Here is a pic I took on the ride itself.

As you can see, the ride started out with a fair number of people (at least 100, I would guess) but to my (and Tim's) disappointment, we were down to about half that amount within an hour and the ride only went from 6:20pm - 8pm (in Toronto sometimes we ride for 3 hours or more). Also, a lot of the route we took (which is just indicated mostly by whomever is in front since it's technically an anarchist movement), was made up of back streets or bike trails (which if you read the wiki article on what CM is, kind of defeats the whole purpose!!!) To be perfectly honest, it pretty much sucked and was very disappointing, especially considering how many people ride bikes in Melbourne. So we went back to my house and Tim made me vegan peanut noodles instead. Yum!!!

A few days later Tim and I went to a free Music Festival and we saw this dude riding a tall bike (2 frames welded on top of one another, although they can sometimes be even higher). Tim was adventurous enough to take it for a spin. I decided to pass since I am accident prone and already have bruises all over my knees from a spill I took on my regular sized bike earlier this week! But it made Tim very happy...

On Thursday night I decided to finally get my hair cut for the first time since Savija cut it before I left. I was just throwing it up all the time and I needed some life put back into it. A bunch of peeps back home asked to see pics so here are 2. I know most of you probably don't care about my hair (which has appeared as a theme in more than one blog post), but it's my blog, not yours, so too bad.

If you didn't care about those pics, you probably won't care about these next few either so you can just skip on down to the end. I warned you that I would have less to write about now that I am working full time but people keep asking me to update so I have to try and make my escapades look like something you would want to read about.

I have been hanging out with my Australian friend Damien (also wonderful!) a lot lately. I officially met him in Melbourne although we discovered when looking at some pics I took at the couchsurfing event I went to on X-Mas eve in Sydney that he was also there, so it was obviously fate that we were supposed to meet at some point (either that or the CS community is just pretty small). He lives about a 5 minute bike ride from my house and he's usually up for super fun times. On Friday night we met up with some friends, shared some goon and laughs and then went to this bar called St. Jeromes (which is one of those funky bars tucked into a dirty alley way filled with rubbish bins and rats!) On our ride home we stopped off at this random art installation and decided to do a photo shoot. Here are a few of the pics that we took...

Then on Saturday night I had some friends over to my place (my flat mate is away for a few weeks) for some fancy cocktails before heading out to this soul/funk night called "Soul-a-GoGo" at this bar called The Laundry (same one as Karaoke on Tom's last night in Australia). Here's a pic of Nas (again) and Damien's butt and Trent (Alabama).

Here's Damien taking a moment's break from making Mojito's for everyone. Thanks Damien!

and then we have Matt sitting next to Trent and half of Conrad (Germany). The ratio of guys to girls was completely unbalanced that night. It wasn't intentional. I invited ton's of girls as well but Nas was the only one who could come. I swear!

and here is a pic of a Possum that was just chilling in my back yard one night. Neat eh? I suppose it would be the equivalent of someone from Australia posting a pic of a Racoon in their blog but, whatever.

Coming soon...Great Ocean Road weekend road trip with work mates. And yes, I actually say "mates" now along with "reckon", "heaps", "flat mate" (which makes much more sense cause we don't share a room!), "half whatever time it is i.e. "half 5, meaning 5:30", "bee-a" (how they say beer), "toilet" (instead of bathroom which coincidentally also makes more sense), "take the piss" (make fun of), "piece of piss" (easy), Melbin' (Melbourne), "whada" (water), "toe-mat-toe" and "toe-mat-toe sauce" (instead of ketchup), "rubbish bin" (garbage can), "goon" (boxed chap wine) "pot of beer" (smaller then a pint, they don't have pints much here), "ring me" (instead of call me), "post" (instead of "mail") and the list goes on. The 3 terms I have so far decided to try and bring to Canada with me are "pashing" (meaning "make-out with" i.e "I pashed with that guy from the party last night"...doesn't that just sound so cute?) and "cruisy" (meaning "easy" i.e. "my boss is away so my job is pretty cruisy right now") and "Rock up" (as in, "I rocked up to the party at 10pm"). Do you reckon I'll get the piss taken out of me?

Oh ya, also, they don't have pennies here. Brilliant idea. I wish Canada would do the same. Although their 50C coin is insanely heavy and huge.

P.S. I bought a new backpack that is 65liters, down from the gigantic 110liter bag that I currently have. Now to, quite literally, get rid of/send home, half my crap before leaving Melbs!