Bridge Over Troubled Water

It's been way too long since I last updated my blog. I am a little disappointed in myself for not writing anything during this time but the truth is that there's been more going inside my head than outside of it. I'll open up some of my thoughts later on in the post.

On Thursday I headed back to work to earn enough money to skip town. My goal was about 15 bins which would bring my week's pay up to $600. We had a long day and worked almost until sundown. Almost 12 hours. I has been wrestling with the decision whether or not to come back for one more day on Friday all day. But when we got on our last row with plenty of good fruit and 15 bins already full, I decided to quit after that day. On Sunday I had received my pay, $612.02 so I barely got to my goal.

On Friday I did some reading and then headed of to Airlie Bus on the local bus. It was a hot day and when I got to Airlie I was very hungry and had decided that I wanted some Hungry Jack's (local equivalent of Burger King). The Airlie Beach main street offered a lot of my favorite stores and fast food joints (McDonald's and JayJay's side by side) but HJ's was a couple bus stops back on the Whitsunday's mall. So I walked back there in about 20 minutes on the side of the road. Had I read my bus ticket I could've gone back by bus without paying extra as the ticket was good for two hours total, with one still remaining.

I don't know why but I didn't feel up to the whole Airlie Beach experience. Pissed off I got my Whopper meal and watched George Carlin's stand up on my iPhone. One thing that pissed me off was that I forgot to bring my swimming trunks to Airlie. It was hot and humid, again. And Airlie wasn't a place for a day trip unless you were coming to the area for shopping and hanging out at the lagoon.

I checked out the mall and then I decided to walk back to town on the coastline walkway to catch a bus there. I took some pictures there (first picture). Airlie seemed like a great place for people with lots of money and lots of time. I just couldn't get out quick enough.

The rest of Friday I watched more HIMYM and just hung out.

On Saturday I did my laundry and just hung out with the people not working that day. I finished season 2 of HIMYM and I filled my calendar with all the things I knew for sure like the flights in May on my way home and the time difference to Finland on all my departure and arrival times. I put them on my paper calendar as well as my iPhone. The day lasted forever but after packing my stuff and filling my cool bag with drinks and snacks I was off.

The bus picked me up a little early and the movie showing was The Constant Gardener which wasn't spectacular but fit in well with my I hope the world was a better place for the less fortunate theme from Wednesday. The first stop was before the end of the movie and I bought some french fries which I ate during the movie. The next movie was Jackie Brown, but I fell asleep pretty quickly. After that it was the boring night for a long time.

Sleeping on the bus wasn't easy but I think I got an adequate amount of shut eye even though I lay awake thinking of friends and acquaintances back at home for over an hour in the middle of the night.

The next day I saw more and more quaint places and towns which caught my eye as much more pleasing and less touristy than the tropical Cairns and Airlie Beach had been. Finally the bus trip ended and I walked to the city center from the bus station at the transit terminal which is like a combination of Kamppi and Pasila but not as far away from the city as Pasila.

I found a busy hostel with $140 weekly rent but I wanted to make sure that I was staying in town for a week before checking in. I visited Flight Center and bought a $207 ticket to Melbourne on the 29th. So I needed to stay in town for 10 nights. I headed to the other side of the central shopping area to the other hostel for the same company than the previous hostel and got a room for 7 nights for $140. A hostel near the transit central would've been $99 per week but I decided that I was going to do so much walking anyway that it would be dumb to be situated that far from the city center instead of smack dab in the middle.

I just left my stuff in my room and headed out to the shops to see if I could find my favorite stores. I found all but JayJay's. I went back and forth into two bookstores, Dymocks and Borders looking for Chuck Klosterman books and reading some others. I found three Klosterman books at one of the stores and they were priced $31, $33 and $36. I decided I'd buy the cheapest one after reading at least two books here, the ultimate hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy (3rd to 5th book) and The Road by Cormac McCarthy which I grabbed from our Hostel on Proserpine. Somebody had actually taken my Irving book from where I'd left it!

After all this hassle, tired, I went to the closest Hungry Jack's and got myself something to eat. I started to feel bad and woke up to the facts as I headed back to my empty Hostel room. I was alone.

Boredom leads to loneliness. Loneliness leads to home-sickness. Add to that the fact that my future boss hasn't contacted me in two weeks and I will run out of money in two weeks without that job and I was stressed as hell. Double the homesickness. I had ran out of credit on my foreign call card and couldn't even phone my girlfriend. Had I not been as tired I wouldn't felt as bad. I actually wished that I was back at Proserpine where I felt safe and homey (although my body and mind took a beating on the tomato fields). 

The big problem with my 9 month trip around the world is that I have to be alone for so much of the time. There are places in the world that are better experienced by yourself. But who goes out to a bar by themselves? Who goes to the beach alone? It takes more than one person to "hang out". So all I have is my thoughts, my books, my iPhone and my blog + Facebook. Something I DON'T want to be dependent on.

I believe I will look back at my time Brisbane with fondness, because it is such a nice place. I'm confident I'll enjoy my next job much more than tomato picking and two months from now I might actually get to see a really familiar face since my brother is heading to Sydney for two weeks in late November. So things keep looking up and I'll try to concentrate on living, experiencing and growing as a person instead of dreaming of Finland and fretting about the places I might have missed in Australia (like the Whitsunday's and the beaches of Sunshine Coast).

I comforted myself with some George Carlin and fell asleep at 9 without even opening my backpacks lest taking out my pajamas or anything.

I thought I'd slept forever when I woke up at 6. I slept until 8 but it still wasn't sunny outside. It's been cloudy with showers all day. At 9 I headed to Gloria Jean's Coffee for some White Hot Chocolate, the sweetest warm drink in the world and to read. Instead I mapped out my plans for the day and some for the week. So today I walked around Brisbane seeing historic buildings, some beautiful parks and took some pictures. Pictured are the town hall, some of the center's tallest buildings and Story Bridge. Later in the week I'll go check out a Koala sanctuary, a mountain top lookout over the city and maybe the zoo and Surfer's Paradise on the Gold Coast if it's warm enough for a swim. I'll probably have to go the movies some night and on Saturday there's a concert at one of the parks I was today. It's the last day of the 22-day Brisbane festival, which I have yet to see a glimpse of.

There's also the Down Under bar & grill next to the other Base hostel which I might have to check out. Because the Canadian guy who came to Proserpine when I did works there and is staying at this hostel for cheaper on the same floor as I am. I bumped in to him on the stairs coming up to my room to write this blog post. After that I ventured to the TV room which was filled with lazy people and I watched two episodes of South Park. It felt too good.

Now it's reading time, then maybe some dinner at Chinatown and tomorrow I'll probably head out to the mountaintop lookout.

Stay strong and keep it real, Finland and the rest of the world!