So things start to go awry. It had been going good, I was getting money and I had a bed to sleep in, a toilet to use and a shower to er... clean. Luckily it's possible to get a good nights sleep here. I lowered myself to one meal a day which ended up being subway because at least that way I do get some salad, although I would have much preferred vegetables. I was getting around and seeing the place, stroking kittehs and having fun saying the names of places in a funneh way. My favorite is Dalkeith in which you put on a show man's voice and talk really deep and serious. There is a place here called Mount pleasant, something I can't get over. They also get creative with their roads names with 'mount joy street' and 'saw avenue'. There is a 'Judd Street' by the way and one day my camera will be working for me to indulge that.
Now the problems arise now that I have found contention in this job. I may have some income to keep me here and I have something to waste the time... but is this what I really came here for? NO! I came here to get a graduate job and waiting for them to become more abundant is no easy task. I may have money but its nothing special so I can't really go out and spend a great chunk entertaining my thoughts. I am simply getting up, working and then going back and sleeping. Because of the failing light and position of plug sockets I have tended to be unable to do much in the period of my day which is not spent working or driving... thus Purgatory.
Thoughts turn to that clip in Family Guy 'I thought we could all just go to purgatory this we did last year' – 'This isn't bad, it's not good but it's not bad'. But its an odd state. It's not without it's events but for everything good there seems to be something bad to bring your mental state back into line. I would wake up earlier than I thought I would have, then find that every one is in the shower for some reason at that time, then find a shower, just to get stuck in the morning school rush, which is a nightmare let me tell you. There are cars everywhere even in the most remote of the suburbs. I was finally beeped which ruined my aim to never get beeped at in AUS and on valentine's day perhaps its's typical that I kissed and mounted my car... ok I mounted the kerb with my car, I mounted my car up on to a kerb, to escape a traffic jam. I saw more SUVs than its peaceful for the mind and got attacked by sprinklers... but at the same time I got to see some nice fountains and a mysterious park, was awed by the bushland in the heart of the suburbs, oh Perth you! And I had a nice episode with a meowing kitteh who followed me across the road. I went to the shopping centre with really painful feet palms by this point, all that walking remember ;) and then had to double back to a bank and get charged $1.50 for drawing out money, just to walk back to where I was an find a bankwest right there where I was and which wouldn't have charged me but on the plus side I got to have an uneventful and peaceful lunch and was able to email Lucy which the laptop charge I cheekily got in yesterday.
I don't know if things perfectly balance but it feels like they do and in a life that is a matter of waiting this really does feel like Purgatory. I can get very stressed but also very mellow.
This brings me on to the point of people's reactions to junk mail here and probably back home, although it changes from where you are in the world. There are ultimately two approaches to junk mail, the green approach in which is mostly favoured by young people here. They see junk mail as a waste of a paper and an addition to the destruction of the world around us and the red approach, I only call it red because its the opposite of green and because China (red flag :P) comes into its case. This view is generally formed by the older people here and that is that advertising is the forefront of freedom of speech. I now point you in the direction of that Mitchel and Webb sound in which one person argues that stopping people from shooting distributors of junk literature would make us like nazi germany and the other saying that the inability to produce this literature would make us like soviet russia.
I wouldn't like to get shot but it makes a good point that maybe there is too much of this. People from China and India tend not to have a problem with the waste it produces because they have an aggressive grab on life that puts poor people without help unless they help themselves. What this means is that as I walk along the road I see houses with restrictions on junk mail and I don't deliver, no problems, but it gets awkward when I need to deliver to houses while the occupants are right outside. I tend to smile and do it slowly so that if they want to stop me they have the chance, something that happened once. Most of the time though they smile and take it off me expectantly. I have seen people rummage into their letter boxes just after I've been there and bin what I delivered straight away and that left me feeling oddly sad, probably because I tend not to think that people must do that all the time and the waste really must add up. I was passed however by this woman yesterday who asked me 'is it worth it' and then hurried on without elaborating. That really got to me and made me angry. I had, over the last few weeks, built an argument for and against this job and my own position on it and yet when a potential debate comes my way the woman just leaves a sneering flyaway comment without an explanation. For all I know she could simply have been wondering why someone as young and fit as I was doing this job but she could just have easily been taking a jab at me as if I represented the people tearing down the rain forest, somewhere, I think, I would draw the line.
So, last thing on this blog I must do the winners of the most imaginative letter box so far. In fourth place we have the humble barrel. It comes in many shapes and sizes and tends to be an old milk bottle which has pieces cut out of it but the reason it comes in the top four is because these are not crude cut but awesome ones which really do add to the mystery and awesomeness of the idea. In third place we have the artistic letter boxes which are sculptures with a slit and number on them (not always a number). Imagine an odd sculpture of metal boxes with a slit in it... that's the kind of thing I deliver to... pure awesome. The reason I place this only third is because it can only be box shaped or a faux rock or real rock, in this sense it is just not intricate enough to be as impressive as second place we have the sea/coast themed letterboxes. These are awesome things that had been shaped or better – planned to be themed. I was going to rest my case at the light house. It was a white cylinder rising from the floor that was actually designed to be a light house. It had a tiny door, a glass room at the top and even a light inside that I hoped came on at night. I deliver to the coast beach suburbs so I guess this is where they get it. I would have left things at the light house but today I was impressed more by this boat. It was a model or an oil tanker or a cargo ship and had a surprisingly large amount of detail including a high water mark. It was basically a boat model that looked like it would float; with a letter hole in it. I mean the paint job wasn't even bad and it hadn't been damaged by the weather → awesomeness.
In first place though, I must give it to the cones. I don't know what it is about these and I think I've only seen two but it was simply a large metal cone. But what really made it special was that the letter box was a mouth. I mean of course it wasn't a mouth but part of the metal was pointing out like lips and the inside you could see was painted red. There was even a tickle of a smile there and without any other facial feature like a nose or eyes it sure was weird to place anything inside. The reason I felt this had to win was because as I let go of the leaflet I had an odd expectation for the mouth to close on my hand... and that is such an odd experience, no letter box would do that... you have your winner :D
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