Mopping is a skill - part two

There was a 1986 movie called Gung Ho, starring Michael Keaton as a shop foreman who works for an American car manufacturing plant that is bought out by a Japanese car company. Along with his Japanese counterpart, played by Geddes Watanabe, (who has been sent to deal with the Americans as punishment for previous perceived failures), his job, is to enforce the new Japanese-style work policies among his American co-workers and must mediate the clash of work attitudes between the Japanese management and American labourers.

One of the volunteers, "A", the one who gets frustrated about my lack of mopping ability, is a very good cook and can chop vegetables unbelievably fast. I think that "A" regards my speed (or lack thereof) in the same way the Japanese employers in Gung Ho regard the American assembly line workers. It amuses me to no end and I'm tempted to rent the DVD. I'm getting faster slowly - if I try to go too fast, I get sloppy and it would really slow things down if we have to take me to the hospital for stiches or finger reattachment.

Mopping is a skill

And, apparently, one I don't possess.

One of the other volunteers was getting a bit frustrated with my inability to mop the floor properly. She has the most limited English of the four, but I know exasperation when I see it. Another of the girls told me that in Japan, children sweep and mop the floors of their schools every night and didn't that happen where I went to school. I told her that normally the caretakers would clean the schools. From time to time, children might get the broom to sweep up a mess off the floor, but not on a daily basis (I imagine what some of my classmates at that age would do if given a bucket of water - more mess than cleaning I think). I didn't even try to explain the concept of the Caretaker's Union regulations and job security.

In the kitchen, there is a specific way to do most of the tasks which, due to the language barrier, I am finding it out primarily after the fact, via trial and error. These specific ways to do things remind me a bit of Girl Guide camp, where there was a specific way to do just about everything (and it was conveniently posted, labelled and laminated for all to see). Anyone else remember washing dishes the Girl Guide way? Remember the three bins? - one with hot, soapy water, then the plain hot water rinse and then the water and bleach basin.

We take turns preparing lunch and dinner. I realise that I don't know how to cook much that does not involve at least one of meat, sugar, white flour or premade ingredients. Of course, learning to cook a bit was part of the reason I am here. Yesterday was my turn. No one died. That is, perhaps, one of the bonuses of cooking without meat - it's a lot harder to give everyone food poisoning!

there's a placenta in the freezer!!!!!!

That's right, a placenta. I'm busy cutting up onions for the Pad Thai, when one of the other volunteers decides to let me in on a little company history. Apparently, the two year old, Kai, was born in the kitchen sink. On purpose. This was back when they were living here at the kitchen when they were first getting the business off the ground. No midwife present. Again, on purpose. And since it's show and tell time, I get to see the frozen placenta. It seems that David was planning on burying it under a tree, but one of the volunteers forgot to water the tree and it died. Sigh.

How do you spell "gossip"?

As I mentioned before, the other volunteers are young women from Japan. They speak English with varying levels of fluency and my Japanese ends at "Hello" and "Ticket, Please". Conversations are sometimes slow and often funny. They all work very hard at learning English and they take the opportunity to learn whenever they can.

Everyone is pleased that I'm Canadian, since my accent (I have an accent?) is easy to understand. Apparently, the previous English-speaking volunteer was from the UK and everyone had a lot of trouble communicating. All four of them are very nice and are teaching me stuff about the kitchen and the general routine. Three of them have those neat little electronic dictionaries. At night, when we sit around the table talking about various things, I'll use a word or phrase that they don't know so they ask me how to spell it and then all three type it into their dictionaries and there is a chorus of "ah" as each dictionary responds. It's hard sometimes to explain grammar rules that I've never studied ("I am going to study tomorrow" vs. "I will study tomorrow")or to give definitions for certain words - It reminds me a bit of the scene in Reality Bites when Winona Ryder's character is at a job interview and she is asked to define ironic - I can't always come up with a good definition, but I can use it in a sentence.


Oh, and there seems to be something about Brisbane and my email service. None of the multiple computers I have tried have been able to get to the Canoemail home page, or any of the Canoe websites. I had no problem in any of the other places I have been in Australia, so I don't know why. I have a set up a temporary account with another website and I have a friend who is forwarding everything - so I may take longer than usual to reply.

Hope everyone is having a good day and it isn't too cold wherever you are when you read this.

what I'm doing here

As I mentioned before, I'm in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I plan to stay for a number of weeks. I'm doing a help exchange at the organic food company. I found it when I was surfing the Internet looking at volunteer placements. Most of the places involve the "volunteer" paying their own transportation, room and board and giving a donation to the organisation in questions. Basically, you pay them to let you volunteer. Most of the ones in the areas of the world I planned to visit involved helping with scientific research - counting sea turtles, counting birds, counting fish, planting trees or counting them. Lots of conservation work going on in this part of the world.

I found this placement which is a bit different. It also happened to be listed on the www.helpx.net website that I joined. HelpX is an online listing of host organic farms, non-organic farms, farmstays, homestays, ranches, lodges, B&B, inns, backpackers hostels and even sailing boats who invite volunteer helpers to stay with them short-term in exchange for food and accommodation (to quote the website). The place I chose is not the usual type of place listed, although I intend to try one of the more traditional ones later in my stay in New Zealand (probably a horse trekking place).


Now, when you read my description of what is involved, I know you will find yourself thinking, "that sounds like slave labour" (about a half dozen people have already said that to me), think of it as volunteer work where I don't have to pay them for the privilege of volunteering.


So, I'm working in a kitchen with the other volunteer helpers making organic food products (okay, actually, I'm washing a lot of dishes and chopping up endless vegetables, but you have to work your way up, and since I don't really know how to cook and I'm prone to 'accidents', it's probably a good plan). It's a family-run business. The money that does not go back into running the business goes towards their non-profit foundation, the goal of which is to create education centres that will support orphaned, street children in India. In March 2007, the first phase will be opening a soup kitchen in Bangalore, in southern India. This will run for a year as a prototype and then it will expand in the following years into an education centre in addition to the soup kitchen and shelter.

There are four other volunteers right now, all young women from Japan. We go to the kitchen on weekdays and stay in the same house with the family. It's a husband and wife and their two children (2 and 5 yrs old). The work is not easy, but I'm learning. And any day now they will let me near the stove...

next time I'll know better

In Brisbane

When preparing for this trip I studied my destinations - guidebooks, the internet, talking to people who had been there. Silly me. Turns out what I really should have been studying was Canada. In addition to wanting to know about me and the reasons for my trip, the main thing people seem to want to talk about is Canada - questions and discussions about Quebec, Canadian culture, history and politics, occasionally entertainment and sports. And about the USA, our beloved neighbour - especially politics. When the discussion veers into areas I don't know much about, I mostly end up talking in generalities, changing the subject back to Australia (or whatever country the person is from) and occasionally, outright faking it. People don't like to hear that you have been too wrapped up in your own little world to find out what the Quebec separatists are currently up to, or that you can't tell them about the effect Trudeau had on the country. And if all else fails, I ask them to explain cricket and why people would want to play a game that lasts 5 days. The discussion will get rather boring after you've heard it from the fourth or fifth person (well okay it wasn't that spellbinding the first time as it is never a short answer), but it gets them safely away from the topic of my ignorance/apathy. So, if you are going travelling and plan on spending time with locals, brush up on all things Canadian.

in Brisbane

Well, technically I'm in Kuraby, which is about 25 km outside of Brisbane, but you get the idea. Just wanted to post to say that my email server has been down for two days. Hopefully there are no ungent messages waiting for me. Today is Saturday and I made my way into the city and found an internet cafe. And since my email is down, it's kind of disappointing.

off to Brisbane

Tomorrow I fly to Brisbane. I'm going to be doing a help exchange at a place that makes frozen, vegetarian, gluten-free, organic meals and sells them in various health food stores across Australia. I'm not sure when I'll have internet access, so don't worry about me if I don't post for a while. Eventually I will find an internet cafe if necessary.

J.

the cost of bananas

Bananas cost $16 a kilogram!!!!!!!! I'm not sure what that is in pounds, but it is rather higher than 59 cents a pound. Apparently they don't normally cost that much, but a cyclone wiped out most of the banana crops. And me, with a two banana a day habit!

Happy Thanksgiving

They don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia (except the visiting and expat Canadians and Americans). My cousin Emma is going to try to cook a pumpkin pie, provided she can find an actual North American-style pumpkin to make it out of. In the local supermarket, a 'pumpkin' is what I would call a squash. A pumpkin squash perhaps, but not a pumpkin. Emma is also going to try to carve a jack-o-lantern. That, I was able to give her some pointers on. The pie, she's on her own.

I like Thanksgiving, sometimes more than Christmas - all the turkey and trimmings with none of the angst over gift-giving. My immediate family goes to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for the weeks surrounding Thanksgiving, leaving me alone in Canada. For the last few years, I have been invited to dinner at the home of some old family friends, the Browns (long, intertwined history between the Stannards and the Browns that goes back many decades). In addition to their whole family, Norma invites along other 'strays' like me to dinner. It's a great time. It's what I'm going to miss most about Canada this year.

I'm in Sydney now. I arrived Saturday and I fly to Brisbane in a few days.

Kangaroo Island

On Kangaroo Island today - doing the group tour thing. It's not bad, if somewhat hurried at times. We get off the bus, take a bounch of pictures and then get back on the bus to drive to the next site. I like the educational stops best - we toured a honey farm, a eucalyptus distillery, a sheep milking farm, a wildlife refuge and a sea lion sanctuary. Lots of information, tired fingers that don't feel like typing. And, I smell like kangaroo - I'm going to go take a shower

The O-Bahn (not the AutoBahn)

Adelaide has something called the O-Bahn.** -> the longest and fastest guided busway in the world, combining elements of both bus and rail systems. It's hard to describe, but basically it is a 12 km long, dedicated, concrete track for buses, separate from the normal roads. It winds through a scenic greenbelt that roughly follows the River Torrens into downtown Adelaide. It reminds me a bit of taking the GO Train downtown through the Don Valley (but without the homeless people camping out in the ravine), except, instead of a train on a track, it's a normal bus.


Each bus has special guide wheels near the front wheels that are connected to its steering mechanism, so when the bus drives into this special track, the track steers the bus, not the driver (like the streetcars in Toronto). But, since the bus has normal wheels, at the end of the track, the bus then can drives off the busway and continues on its route on normal roads like any other vehicle - so you don't have to transfer to another vehicle like you do with a subway or the GO train.
The buses can travel up to 100 km/hr, and the busway is capable of carrying 18,000 passengers an hour from downtown Adelaide to the suburbs in just 15 minutes.

It's neat. Toronto should think about something like this when it replaces the Scarborough RT line.

** I'm paraphrasing (and plagerizing) the O-Bahn brochure and Wikipedia

diamonds are trump, spades are called

Just got back from a lovely long weekend. Helen and Richard have a vacation home, six blocks from the beach in a small town called Goolwa. Their son Matt and his wife Emma came down on Sunday and stayed over night. Last night we played a couple of hours of cards and I realised just how out of practice I am. All those long hours in high school spent playing cards and, except for Euchre, I can’t remember the rules of any of the games well enough to teach someone else how to play. Maybe when I get back to Canada, I will host an evening of card playing and, between the lot of us, we can figure out how play again.

oops I did it again

Friday morning, I'm eating breakfast and I bit down on my fork and cracked the veneer on my front tooth for the second time in less than a year. The first time was on Christmas Eve day. Besides the fact I didn't want to go around looking like I'd been in a bar fight, the nerve was exposed so it hurt a bit. Luckily, Helen works for a dentist so she got me an emergency appointment and I got a temporary fix that will have to last until I get home next spring. Grateful for travel insurance that covers dental emergencies.

And no, I'm not going to post the pictures.