Koh Phangan

Jesus Christ!
What a week. On the day I was to get the overnight train to Surut Thani I went off for a wander, must’ve walked around for hours seeing the back streets of Bangkok. As usual the Tuk Tuk drivers are trying to hustle you into the back and I was having none of it…. almost none of it. I dunno I was tired, the guy said he’d take me sightseeing, 20 baht for an hour. That’s actually not bad so I thought fuck it, why not? When I get in we start chatting and he says ‘You want to go shopping?’
‘Nah mate, not interested. Just wanna see around a bit”
He persisted though and I was ready to get out again and he leveled with me that he was sponsored by this place and that’s how he pays for his fuel, go in 5 min buy nothing and I’ll take you around.
That was ok, he took me to a fuckin tailor who wanted to measure me up for a suit. I played along for 4 min 59 sec then made my excuses and left. As he took me around he was chatting away (fishing as it turns out) and I said I was off to Koh Phangan for the weekend, he asked had I anything booked. Nope of course not, I was playin it by ear for 7 months and it had served me well enough so far. Next thing ye know I’m in a travel agents getting bullshitted by this dude who I couldn’t be fucked with either but for some reason I bought 5 nights in a luxury bungalow right on the beach. Now I did haggle a bit and got the price down by 1000 baht, but I still normally would’ve walked out so I dunno.

Got the night train down, it was surprisingly comfortable apart from the fact that the bed was 6′ long and I’m 6’4″. A bit noisy but I had earplugs, and they didn’t turn the lights off at all so i didn’t sleep too much so was knackered again the next day. Got the bus, then ferry over to Koh Phangan. It was then that my original fears of being hustled came to fruition, no the island wasn’t booked out, there were at least 5 girls with signs for hostels on the pier. Shite. So hopped on a taxi to the resort, a bit annoyed but not bad. When we got to the resort my heart sunk again, from the road it looked like fuck all. A building site. Really pissed off now I dandered up to the bar, it was nice enough, constructed from local timber with a TV on and a load of camp mattress sorta things to lie on. Went to my room and had the first good news of the day. The room was actually quite nice, newly built funnily enough, had aircon and a double bed. It was walking distance to the nearest town so I went off for a wander to get some lunch as I’d only had a bag of crisps in the previous 18 hours. When I got back there were a few about, two girls from Cork and a lad from Essex. So we sat and drank for the rest of the night and had a bit of craic, ended up paddling in the sea and when I was putting my flip flops back on went face first into the water. Good start then.

The following day having recovered sufficiently, I decided to hire a Moped to go see the island a little. They’re dirt cheap. So off I goes to get my passport outta my bag, not there. I emptied the bag and its contents and carefully checked every crevasse and pocket of every item of clothing like an OCD sufferer for about an hour. Not there, ah can this weekend get any worse? So I knew there was nothing I could do at this stage of the day so I laid about watching films and chatting to some of the new arrivals. All of them were really good craic and to be fair, if it wasn’t for a few friendly faces around I’d probably have gone insane stripping ans re-stripping my bag.
One guy in particular needs a special mention for being an absolute legend. Paul, a young guy from London who’d been drinking with his brother watching a video of the Full Moon party, went home pissed and jumped on a flight in the next day or two with the clothes on his back and an empty rucksack. Every day he had more stories about what he’d been doing whilst we were being boring lying about with a few beers at the resort. On his first night he’d got it into his head that he needed a joint and walked off with the guy who owned the local tattoo shop to find some, went off on an adventure with him, kept coming back to us telling us where he’d been. Later that night/morning he’d wandered down a dirt road to find some locals having a party, so he joined in where they started teaching him thai words and taking the piss out of him. The next day he hired a moped despite being completely clueless in its operation to the point where people had to show him how to start it, I did have a laugh when he had to kick start it and I gave him a hand myself and he was off on his merry way. He’s been found on that scooter ever since in various shapes of drunkeness with more stories that I only wish I could possibly have the same disregard for my own wellbeing to be able to tell. He will be found either dead in the jungle or in prison, but he’ll have a hell of a story to tell.

On the Sunday again, there wasn’t much movement going on until around 7 when we asked to get the football on, one of the guys was a Spurs fan so we watched as City tore them apart. Watching Harry Redknapp do his post match dubbed in thai is head melting. In the hour after that the drinking games came out and the buckets of Sang Som started flowing in style, some had more than others due to the fact we clearly were picking on them during the drinking games
As the Utd match kicked off I turned the TV up full blast so I wouldn’t miss anything if I got distracted by beer. 8 2 be an Arsenal fan all right. It got to 6-1 before the taxi arrived for the beach party so I was reluctant to go but went anyway. Now having already lost my passport I was taking no chances, so I stashed everything except for some cash and my room key and about 18 of us piled into, onto and over this ute that supposedly held 12. There was no mistaking where this wagon was heading with all us well oiled by this stage and the music pumping. I can’t tell you a lot about the Black Moon Party, I can tell you I had at least two more buckets and they weren’t being measured in, I didn’t see how full the bottle was when she started but it was empty when she finished pouring and it was 3/4 full before the coke and red bull was added (rocketfuel). I can also say there was a lot of luminous paint on the go. Needless to say I was dancing about like a buck eejit and there is a massive black hole in my night, I’m sure I passed out at some point. I remember realising at one point my flip flops weren’t hanging off my arms anymore and when I was walking barefoot a time later (again patchy in between) I realised all my cash was gone, whether I drank it or dropped it is anyone’s guess but neither would surprise me. Now it was a couple of miles back to my bed so I spied the taxi driving off with only a couple of people in it, so I ran after it and jumped on the back of it was rode it up the road, luckily he was going further than I needed to go or I’d have been screwed, I waited till he slowed to turn a corner and jumped. Free taxi!

The next morning events were relayed by two people only, so they may have been making up fun stories about the rest of us but nobody can really remember what really went on. One guy woke up under a tree on a different beach, we know that much. The Sunday was very much a hangover day, I went into town for a fry up and realised I was still pissed as I sat and watched people go about their business. The fry was ok, still not a Mad Hatter. Back to the bar and people were starting to come out and stories got more or less spread but nothing productive happened. In the evening there was some seriously heavy rain and a power cut for about half an hour or more. It was the best thing that could’ve happened to be fair, because we gathered round a table and started playing games rather than zombifying in front of the TV. Two Canadian guys had a game called ‘What If?’ You took a piece of paper and wrote a question, could be anything. ‘What if monkeys could fly?’ then you swap your question with someone else and write the answer to that question, in this case I wrote that ‘the wicked witch of the west would get you’. Then you swap again, you go around clockwise, one asks the question they have in front of them, and the next person reads out the answer to the different question they have in their hand, to hilarious results. It of course got downright filthy but very very funny.

Despite the shit that’s happened, I’m in Bangkok again now, I’ve been to the embassy and got my Emergency Passport, got it stamped at a different place miles away and spent the entire day paying cabs. It got to rush hour so I took my life in my hands and took a Moped taxi, I should probably be dead or at the very least kneecapped by wing mirrors. It was especially hair raising when he started overtaking into oncoming traffic. However, I’m alive, and this is the longest page I’ve wrote yet I think. At least it feels that long, took three separate sittings to finish it and no I haven’t proofread it again and probably won’t. I’ll be back in Thailand and back to Koh Phangan, though I may have one of those gay little belts your grandparents wear when they go on holiday to keep their valuables in.

BANGkok

Right, it’s been a while I know. But I was assuming nobody wanted to read the mundane stories about ploughing. And to be fair, that’s pretty much all I was doing up until a month ago.
I headed home on the first of the month to see the folks and ruin my liver having catchup pints with a lot of old friends. Seriously bad the first weekend, I’ve taken a new resolution to wait until at least midday before I start drinking on day 2…
The following weekend was our Paul’s wedding, I need say know more there as none of you know Paul, but needless to say he won the drunkest man of the night award and I was proud of myself for staying off the shorts till after 11pm.
During this time I did more, you guessed it, ploughing. Though the tractor I was using was significantly smaller than what I’m used to these days. In fact I think they’ve shrunk.
In Thailand at the minute, thought I’d stay over for a week this time rather than fly straight through. It started interesting so may continue that way. On the plane I was given two landing cards, one said arrivals, the other departure. So i assumed I only needed the first one so filled it in and ditched the other. When I got to the dude at the desk I found out otherwise, now his English was as rusty as my Thai is so I’ll roughly translate what he said to me*…
“Oi dickhead, where’s the other half?”
“I don’t have it”
“You need both halves. Where’s the other bit?
“I don’t have it”
“Well go sort it out lad!”
At this point I noticed someone had helpfully dropped a blank card on the floor, so I picked it up, tore off the departure bit and handed it to him blank.
“Aye, suppose that’ll have to do”
“Cheers”
“Right fuck off outta my sight….twat”

Conveniently that last line sounded a lot like ‘Bye Bye’ but I’m assuming he was still speaking Thai to me and any resemblance of a pleasantry was mere coincidence.

Yesterday I spent a bit of time getting my bearings and went down nearly all the side streets I found in a bid to see where everything was, surprisingly difficult when you have a guy on every street corner trying to pry you into their hoorhouse. They all had the same flyer though, so those weren’t really the girls I could expect or one dance club in the vicinity had a really aggressive marketing strategy. Either way this was in the afternoon and I was in no form for people trying to sell me things, I’m not a fan of it at the best of times. I did have one close shave however, the guy in my room at the hostel warned me to me to watch out for the gay street, dead on. So one of these side streets that had a lot of bars just like all the rest, nothing untoward. Alarm bells should’ve rang when walking past the first bar I noticed the barman had no shirt on, it was 36 degrees so I thought nothing of it. Then the next bar had a load of promo staff outside trying to coax me in on the offer of happy hours drinks, they looked a little camp but again, going into any bars at this stage was not on the agenda and I still though nothing of it. Next bar is when it finally dropped, promo guy outside again only this time he was wearing a tight black singlet, hotpants, knee high socks and timberland boots. I legged it.

Went out last night after having a scout around and again the aggressive marketing was in full show. I passed one bar called Safari that didn’t have anyone outside and CCR was pumpin out, so I took a mental note. Did a lap of Patphong nightmarket looking at all the knock-off merchandise and running away from pimps, got a good laugh when I heard ‘Ping Pong’ show however. Went back around to Safari and this time it was Rolling Stones. That’ll do me then. Went in and it was very quiet, two single guys sitting getting surrounded by girls in various attire and a rather depressed looking girl trying to look enthusiastic as she sang. I could swear I’d just walked into a gritty ‘Nam film. Obviously the soundtrack helped but I was half expecting a game of russian roullette in the corner. I settled in for a beer and took in the surroundings, pretty small bar, very red in decor and lighting, a bit clichéd to be honest. Obviously a couple of the girls took note of the young attractive guy sitting at the bar and came over to berate me, I had one on each side chatting away in engrish and one making herself useful giving me an amazing backrub, not bad considering I only came in for a beer. A while later a group of mid-life crisiser’s in their late 40′s came in steamin and entertained me more than the dancers ever could have. Basically typical pissheads who’ve gone on the run from their wives if they ever had any and lovin the attention of the girls. One was a complete mess and was falling all over the place, you could see the thoughts running through the staffs heads, the barstaff in them wanted him out asap, but the hooker in them could milk this poor fool for all he was worth. I was bemused, but also jetlagged so left shortly after 10 to the vocal disappointment of the girl giving me the backrub.
Haha bitch, you thought I was gonna be as easily parted with my cash as that other dude, all you got was a single pesky drink!.

On the way home I clocked a travel agent and made a mental note. Went there this morning and said ‘Send me sightseeing!’ So ended up seeing the Grand Temple and Royal Palace today, see Bangkok isn’t all ladyboys and market stalls ye know. The temples are style looking, there are a load of them all together near the palace built by previous kings. Only downside being, as its a very religious sight, I wasn’t allowed to wear shorts, my jeans were the only viable option. Now you know that feeling of a single drip of sweat running down your crack? Yeah I had lots of that. Some serious gold in that place. We weren’t allowed to take picture (or wear shoes) in the Grand temple itself, the concrete outside was feckin hot. But when we went in to see the statue of Buddha that was carved from a massive lump of jade and dressed in gold chainmail I noticed there was a huge window facing it. Obviously they made the no pictures rule before zoom lenses were common, my wee camera wasn’t the best for the job but the amount of people outside with snazzy DSLR’s technically not taking pictures inside the temple but still blatantly flouting the sprit of the rule as it were was hilarious. I’ll post pictures next week when I’m back in Sydney ’cause I don’t have my USB lead with me.

I’ve the train booked for Ko Phanan tomorrow evening so this’ll be my last night in Bangkok I think, maybe I’ll go see what all the hype of Ping Pong is, was never a big fan of table tennis myself so I’m not sure what the fuss is about.

*Note: I do not know a single word of the Thai language so all of the above is pure conjecture on my part, but I’m really good at reading body language so I’m 99% sure all above translations are correct, more or less.

Car Woes

So I’m still in Wee Waa only with no car to use now, basically the Thermostat packed in and because I’m about as car savvy as Chunk from the Goonies, the engine overheated and is now fucked. Bummer. Anyway, I’ve been quoted about 2/3 of what I paid for the car to get a new engine head and all the bits it needs. Then the labour on top of that, then when I do get it going again the rego will be due so its back into the mechanic for a green slip and paying that. Basically in the next 6 weeks the car will have cost me $500 more than I paid for it. Gumtree wrecking/repairable ad then.

Now I’m not expecting much for the car but its worth a punt on there and hope I get something back on it right. So at 7.45 this morning (about 10 hours after the post) I get a text

“I called your line but it wasn’t going through about your posted get back to me at nickandrew35 at ymail dot com with the condition and firm price”

Ok that was quick, all seemed reasonable otherwise, I didn’t list a price as I’d prefer to haggle. I’ll not bore you with my initial email as its rudimentary car stuffles. The reply however…

“<nickandrew35@ymail.com>
Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 8:11 AM

To: Darren McCann <………@gmail.com>

Thanks for the response. Am interested in buying this vehicle and i will like to know the last firm price so consider me as your favorite buyer as i will like to have some more pictures if you have them and i will be paying via PayPal or Bank transfer straight to your account so i will like you to get back to me either with your PayPal email id or your bank details so i can proceed with the payment right away and i work in a petroleum company so i do not have access to phone calls except our internet connection and i will have my shipping agent who handle shipment everywhere around the world so they will be coming for the pick up as soon as payment is confirmed in your account so get back to me with this details so i can proceed with the payment.
Your PayPal id/Bank details:
Full name:
What is your reason for selling it?
Address:
Are you the first owner:
I’m sorry, just want to be sure about the sale before i proceed”

Ok…We’ll ignore the punctuation at the moment and focus on the more glaring alarm bells shall we, anyone buying a scrap car is almost always paying cash. Petroleum companies that give access to the internet to browse Gumtree, also let you use a phone. Unless your an amateur mechanic looking for a project, or an auto breaker looking for parts, you do not look in the breakers section of the ads. These are facts. If we ignore all these we still have to consider that some dude is trying to use a worldwide shipping agent to tow a car. This could be fun.

“To: Nicholas Andrew nickandrew35@ymail.com

My PayPal is the same as my email address, $500 is the firm Price. I
have no other pictures at the moment as I haven’t collected the car
from the mechanic yet. I will sell the car to the first person to put
money in my hand, sorry no reserves here.
Please note however I am now dubious as to why you would organise a
worldwide shipping agent to purchase a repair job. However, if you are
genuine, I look forward to hearing from you.”

I though best to reply sensibly in case all my deductions were wrong, however airing my concern so they can either explain themselves or prove to me they’re an automated system for scamming idiots by ignoring my queries altogether.

“To: Darren McCann <………@gmail.com>

I was just about to make the payment when i had this little problem with the picking up,I got an email from my agent..i taught i included that in my previous email.he said he won’t come and pick up the item unless i pay him the agent commission fee first in order to be able to schedule a pick up time ,and my pick up agent head quarters is in the Malaysia and all commission payments made for pick up, from anywhere in the world is sent to their head quarters in the Malaysia and the  only form of payments they accept is western union money transfer and i tried to pay online but i will need a credit card which i didn’t bring along, and there is no post office (there is usually a western union section in have to ask you to help me with the pick up fees, i will include the $600 they charged to pick it up and take it my home (1st class treatment), to the payments i will send through PayPal. After i have made the payments and it has been confirmed by PayPal, i will need you to help me send the $600 to my pick up agent through western union money transfer, the  western union money transfer can be made at a post office near to you,there is always a western union agent in most post offices or online at www.westernunion.com .I will be making the payments shortly and will email you as soon as it has been done.”

The latter it would seem. its the old you pay the processing fee before I send you you prize money scam. Only the prize money in this case is less than the processing fee. This is a 15 year old car with a knackered engine, not a frickin DB9.

“To: Nicholas Andrew <nickandrew35@ymail.com>

So you want me to send you more than I’m asking for the car so you can
buy the car from me. Yes of course I should’ve understood that. Ok
I’ll get onto that right away. Perhaps in the meantime you could give
me a quick reacharound as a favour.
Cheers”

I know its crass but it fits the analogy of what this guy was trying to do to me. I figured that this would be enough to end it, I even started writing this post about it because I was still finding it funny. But then this arrived…

“To: Darren McCann <..…..@gmail.com>

I cant get you.. Should i proceed with the payment so you can send the money to the agent for pick up.”

Hmmm…. Persistently stupid eh?

“To: Nicholas Andrew nickandrew35@ymail.com

Yes, yes. Send me the money, plus what you want me to give the agent
obviously and if you wouldn’t mind sending me an extra few hundred so
I can score some Class A’s and a Thai lady to kick me in the nuts
repeatedly till my balls explode. That would be just great. Hope to
hear from you soon.”

No reply so far…..

The offending ad.

Welcome to County Wee Waa

Well it might as well be, as I said last time, the Irish were starting to arrive. Town’s full of us now, as is the next town, and pretty much every town around here. Even one of my mate’s from home who I hadn’t seen in years landed up after asking me for a few job leads.

The cotton harvest finished at the weekend there, so now I’ve got a bit more time on my hands to write and troll the internet in general. Had a couple of 90+ hour weeks there so my predictions of eat, work, sleep came true. As we were nearing the end of harvest we kept going for the sake of finishing it. Good in a way as we don’t have to do it anymore but after 12 or 13 days straight I found myself going into a zombie like/slightly insane state. My concentration went out the window, broke a few minor things and took nearly 10 seconds to interpret hand signals and react to them. I’m surprised I didn’t drive over someone to be fair.

On the plus side, I get paid by the hour. I have to go home in August for a family wedding, I booked another flight back out here from Dublin to Thailand for a week, then back to Sydney. The price came in at less than a weeks wages. So I reckon I’ll stay here till maybe mid July to save up a load of dosh so I don’t have to do any paid work when I’m at home and basically take 6 weeks holiday. We’re stripping all the dust and cotton off the machinery to store it away for next year. Dusty hoor of a job but it needs done or the mice would set up home and eat all the wiring. Haven’t been working too hard at it anyway, didn’t start till 9 on Monday, then knocked off an hour early today. The weather seemed to have been waiting on us to finish ‘cause its been shite since Sunday night. Not a fan, reminds me of working on the farm at home, grey and miserable.

Other than work, I’ve been lying low. I’ve had one proper night out during picking as we had a day or two off in the middle, then the weekend passed we had a fair few. The boss hosted all of us on Sunday for a BBQ and a few beers. Ended up telling the boss I was a fan of the red wine and all of a sudden he was raiding his cellar and shared a few bottles with me. Bloody good wine an’ all.

Cotton Pickin’

So the harvest is starting up slowly but surely, a few paddocks are ready early so we’re easing into it gently to make sure all the equipment will work seeing as its been sitting idle since last May. It doesn’t, multiples of hydraulic hoses bursting, bolts shearing and tyres popping. Personally I‘ve been lucky, I’ve had one incident where the cast iron towbar on my tractor snapped but the pin held so I bolted a new one on within 10 minutes. I did manage to catch the corner of my bale buggy on the module press and pulled two hoses off it. So I did what any sensible person would do and kept driving.

As its still only starting up I’m getting away with 12hr days still and I’ve got Sunday off, I’m makin the most of it when I can because I smell a month of work, eat, sleep, work, sleep, eat, work….. The towns filling up with people up for the harvest, I’m not the only Irish lad with 100km any more but we’re still rare. Had a couple of boys from Tipperary in town for a week or so before they got the sack for doin donuts in a ute and they’re in the next town now (the trick is to do donuts in the paddocks away from the sheds where the boss can’t see you). I bumped into two other lads who are out of town a bit, one from Kildare and the other Roscommon, I’ll be honest, I’ve gone back on my saying I want to disappear out to the outback to where there’s no Irish. Its not all its cracked up to be, when you hear a local accent you make a beeline for it.

I suppose its how it happens with immigrants everywhere, its a bit of home from home. I didn’t notice me doing it at first but the trip down to Sydney for St Patricks weekend hit it home to me how much I enjoy the company of my countrymen. I wouldn’t call it homesick, I’m still planning on staying out here as long as I can, but I can understand now how my uncle has lived in England for 20 years and is more in tune with some things in Ireland than I was when i was living IN Ireland.

Rather than post my usual teaser of a couple of photo’s, here’s a link to the photo album on Bakebook. It’ll maybe explain a bit of the shite I was talkin at the top as well.

More Road

Hi all ye faithful reader types, namely people who bother to click the link on Facebook by the looks of the site stats, and that one person from Google. Dunno what you’d enter into google to find this….Inane rantings of a bored irishman? Anyway…

Still in downtime at work so I took some time off and headed South to the big smoke again for a long weekend of drinking for St Patricks day. Took a different route down and saw some other interesting things, my favourite was the Mystery Road. Big open straight highway with very little in sight except more road and some trees in the distance, then I come across a sign pointing to the right for ‘Mystery Road’, that has Wolf Creek written all over it. I was still seriously tempted to drive down it to see what sort of adventure would ensue. However in the back of my mind I knew that I didn’t live in an episode of The Simpsons and it wouldn’t be an adventure, just a detour on an already 8 hour drive. But still…..

Arrived in Sydney on Wednesday and took it easy, Thursday morning I was awake at stupid o’clock as usual so I went out and did productive things. Thursday being St Patricks day, everyone assumed I’d be in the pub and seemed confused as to why I wasn’t, the reason of course being everyone I would be drinking with was still in work and wouldn’t be in the pub till 5. I didn’t tell them that, I just acted disgusted at the negative stereotype they were casting upon me, fools. The Rocks, the fairly old area of Sydney just under the bridge is full of Irish bars, and as such were rammed on Thursday night, I’m not sure what time we finished up at but it was after the takeaways were closed so we convinced the Indian guy in the 24 hour garage that all the pies left had been sitting too long and he couldn’t sell them, fair play to him, he gave us them, the crust could break a tooth but the Angus beef filling was still great. Better than Esperanto’s anyway.

Friday night I laid low, not really through a hangover, just…..didn’t feel like it. Saturday, back in the pub, but a quiet one. Still managed to get to the whiskeys but only a few and was generally well behaved sitting watching NRL and the girls walking past my table (I know, but the Bondi girls are a bit above me so I wasn’t wasting my time chasing, damn nice to look at though). Now the thing about not being in Ireland on St Patricks day is this, its not a public holiday so people don’t have the full day off to go drinking and watch parades. All the ones I was out with on Thursday had horrible hangover fuelled days at work on Friday. However, in any major city with a large Irish population they still celebrate the day with parades etc on the weekend. So everyone had Monday booked off for what was going to happen on Sunday  

Unfortunately it was bucketing down on Sunday morning so the family day in Hyde Park with the parade was cancelled. Only one thing for it then.. went to one of the major Irish bars in the rocks called the Mercantile. Nice spot, on the weekends there’s a market on the street just outside it, lots of tourists go round it. Couple that with the bar being rammed with mad Irish people dressed in green or  some form of Irish affiliation such as GAA shirts and rugby shirts. I thing we were a bigger attraction than the market, Japanese tourists jumping in, posing in green hats for pictures. We were like a zoo attraction with the barriers up to stop us spilling out onto the street, I felt like putting a sign up saying ‘Please do not feed the animals’. All in a days craic though. The shorts were started before 5 o’clock so you can imagine how that went. I’m only glad we didn’t get that bottle of wine after kick out time, the vodka & red bull (dzzt) put me in bad enough shape.

Tuesday I came back up the road and I’m back at work, still not due to harvest for another week so I’ll have another weekend to torture the locals with before I’m working 80 hours again. Might as well enjoy myself up here in the sticks.

A month down the line

Has it really been a month since my last post? Dunno what you readers could possibly have survived without my literary input to your lives.

So I’m still in the pub with the massive family room and the dodgy microwave. I’ve started on a daily multivitamin to make up for my terrible eating habits. I haven’t seen much more of the surrounding area to be honest, I’ve been working my knickers off since I’ve started the job. It was kinda my fault though, I’ve had more opportunities for time off than I’ve taken. Got to the point where I was told to take a day off last week. I can’t help it if I’m greedy and really enjoy the wage packet my 70 hour weeks give me.

Haven’t been irrigating as much of late, between one of the cycles I was put onto a tractor to grade (level) the soil and I apparently took a lot less training than usual for a new start, probably something to do with the fact that I already have loads of experience on machinery unlike my cotton skills. So when the next irrigation came up and I was due to start that, they asked me to stay on the tractor instead. I can’t complain, irrigating involves wading through water, getting wet feet all day and burning your fingers on pipes that have been sitting in the afternoon sun. The particular job I was doing on the tractor involved lining the tractor up to a line on the GPS, dropping the grader to the right height, hit the button for Autosteer then go to sleep or play on my phone until the GPS beeps to tell me to turn around, line the tractor up….yeah, rinse and repeat.

When that finished, I was put onto the chisel plough to break up the ground that I’d spent the previous 10 days levelling. Usin a Case Quadtrack for that though, its a big hoor of a machine, slow going and un-manoeuvrable, but its mega powerful. The irrigation is finished now, the cotton harvest is due in about three weeks. In the bit of down time at the minute, I spent all day today servicing old tractors that only get pulled out during harvest so they all needed a once over. This weekend is actually my first full weekend off since I started, and I’ve just realised its the first time I’ve had two days off in over a month, only did 56 hours this week so I’ve not happy about that. I’m also not happy that I’m actually a workaholic it would seem. However, the downtime coincides nicely with St Patricks day so I’ll be heading back to Sydney next weekend to surround myself with fellow paddy’s who call me by my name and not just ‘Hey Irish’ , and give my liver the first stress its had in a while.

I’ve been told my job is secure and they want me to stay for the full 6 months, in fact I’ve been told that if I try to leave before cotton harvest, I’ll be chained to my machine and they’ll throw me scraps of food until after its finished. So that’s me here to mid May at least. The harvest should be fairly steady going, should be fairly rich by the time its finished. I think its preparing the ground for wheat after that so should probably mean more sleeping on a tractor that drives itself.