I’ve been meaning to write another blog post, but it just hasn’t happened. I ended up working again on Saturday night (I almost told them I couldn’t work, but made myself do it because I finally had an opportunity to make some money so I figured I needed to take it) and despite being told I would be finished at 10pm, due to the fact that I had to be up for work at 5:30am, that didn’t quite happen. A bit of a long story, but I was working at the Casino (it's more than a casino, it's a hotel, restaurant, catering venue and casino all rolled into one) and they had 4 functions going on so I was assigned to the Graduation dinner which was going to be buffet style. Hannah, the manager in charge of our group, was super nice and I told her I needed to leave at 10pm (Signature Staff was supposed to tell them ahead of time, but I had a feeling it probably hadn’t been passed along) and she said that was totally fine. Since it was a buffet I again wouldn’t have to worry about carrying three plates. After we’d had our briefing for the evening and everyone had been assigned tables and tasks for the night, the GM came and pulled me to the Engineering Australia Awards dinner because one of the other guys didn’t speak English well enough. By the time I joined that group I’d missed the briefing, so only got a quick run through and then we were busy doing other things. I never got a chance to tell Tim, the new manager, that I needed to leave early, but based on the handout he’d given me, the function was to be over at midnight, so I figured two extra hours wouldn’t kill me. Oh, and did I mention this was NOT a buffet dinner?
Holding a tray full of drinks for 20min. during cocktail hour did not help my sore arms from the previous night, and I ended up spilling 2 glasses of champagne at one point – thankfully only one of them broke, and since it was on carpet the whole entire room wasn’t alerted to my plight. The guests near me at the time were very nice, so that helped. Then not 10 minutes later, while putting dirty glasses in the dish racks in the kitchen another glass fell off my tray and shattered. Everyone in the kitchen heard that one! There were four people assigned to do the food run, 2 people to carry 3 plates and 2 people to carry 2 plates: lucky me, I got to be one of the 3-plate servers. The first run was fine, no dramas. But then it came time to do the main meal and the plates were significantly larger and they were hot! The first ones weren’t as hot, because they sat out a bit longer and had time to cool, but by the middle of the run they were burning my hands. Your hands start sweating and it hurts like crazy and you’re trying desperately, and I do mean desperately, not to drop one while walking as fast as humanly possible so that you can hurry and put it down. Somehow I did manage to successfully deliver all the dinner plates. I was never so happy to see a tiny little dessert plate in my life!
Anyway, the rest of the night went well and we started to clean up. I then found out we had to set up for another function! Tim wasn’t really around, he’d shown us how to rearrange the room and then disappeared, plus I felt a bit funny mentioning it now. Most of us were really tired and just wanted to go home, so we just worked as fast as we could. Hannah wandered in around 12:30am and saw me and exclaimed, “What are you still doing here!?” I told her it was ok, we were almost done anyway, but she said, “No, let’s go” and told me she’d sign off on my time sheet. Who knows what time everyone else finished, it would easily have been 2am. Morning, of course, came super early.
Louis and I had planned on going to the beach Sunday afternoon, and despite both of us being quite tired we decided to keep the original plan and headed to Palm Cove after my shift in reception was finished. It was a gorgeous day, and I’m always so shocked by how lovely the water is here – it’s the most stunning shades of blue and green (which sadly doesn't quite turn out in pictures).
We had a picnic lunch on the sand and then decided to go for a swim. The water was incredibly warm, I think someone said it was 24C (which is about 75F), my Dad would have loved it. Thankfully jellyfish season isn’t in full swing and the beach had a stinger-net section, so we didn’t have to worry about that too much. Monday was a rather lazy day, followed by an evening of volleyball. As you might recall, Monday’s are the free VB clinic. Erin and her friend Grace were there again (they only ever come to the clinic), as were Pukari and Caterina. I’ve gone to the clinic several times and we usually “learn” the same techniques every time, but this week we actually learned some new things and finally got to work on serving again. My overhand serve is coming along quite nicely now. Anyway, since I didn’t have to work Tuesday morning I stayed until the lights went out, which I haven’t done in quite awhile. It was a fun night because I ended up playing with such a variety of people, pretty much all of my volleyball friends were there at some point and I was able to play a game or two with them. Louis usually has Monday’s off so we usually see each other at volleyball, but he never showed up and I rarely take my phone, so when I got back to my hostel around 10:30pm I wasn’t surprised to see he’d texted me, but was surprised to learn that he’d had to work and he’d come by to see me after finishing work. I texted to tell him I’d just got back from volleyball and he said he was over in the restaurant. I guess a bunch of his friends had made plans last week to go out for dinner but since he’d had to work and couldn’t go he’d never heard where they were having dinner. He’d run into them while waiting around for me so it was nice to get to meet some of his Korean friends. Several of them are masseuses and most of his guy friends are former futsal teammates. They all mainly chatted in Korean, which doesn’t bother me after living in Japan; a few of them did talk with me in English though and they all seem very nice. I guess they were surprised to find him there and even more surprised that he was dating someone who isn’t Korean. Well, I think that just about brings you all up to date – I hope you all have a very blessed Thanksgiving with lots of cranberry sauce and pecan pie.
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