On the Other Side of the Phone

So you know those annoying people who call you all the time asking for donations? Please be nice to them, as I could be one of them (well, at least if you happen to be in Australia at the moment…). The girl in my first hostel room, Kayleigh, works at this call centre and told me that I could easily get a job there if I wanted. I wasn’t too interested, but when I found out how flexible the hours were (you work 3-4 hour shifts and you can do from 20 up to 60 hours a week, if you want) I decided I might as well apply since I wasn’t having much luck elsewhere.

It’s not the most fun in the world, and the time moves pretty slowly (though not as slowly as flyering) but I get paid and it actually is for a charity cause, which makes me feel a little better than if I was just trying to change someone’s phone plan or sell them insurance. I was assigned to The Kids’ Cancer Project, which funds children’s cancer research (don’t worry, I won’t do the whole spiel right now). They’ve just started trials for Gene Therapy, which is a treatment that could save 200 children’s lives a year, and is a major breakthrough for Australia (okay I lied that was a bit of the spiel) which is pretty cool and makes it easier to sell, I think, than if it was just a vague charity without a solid accomplishment.

Still pretty annoying though. We call a range of people, but I feel like I’ve mostly got pensioners, who can be really nice (one lady was telling me about giving teddy bears to kids) or kind of cranky, and they are hard to convince to donate because they don’t have a lot (and I’m really bad about trying to push people, since I hate that on the other end). The morning and evening shifts are the best because that’s when we catch the working people who have more money to spare.

If you’ve never done call centre calling before (lucky you) there’s actually quite a complicated system set up. We have two different scripts, one for the “Cold” calls (they haven’t donated before) and another one for “Warm” calls (we thank them for their past donation and ask for another one). But there are actually 4 tiers of calling, which makes it even more confusing. It ranges from “Frosty,” which are randomly generated numbers (I hate this one because you get angry people who don’t want to be called, as well as businesses and fax numbers which make a horrible loud beeping noise), “Cold,” “Tepid,”  which is for people who promised to make a donation, but it didn’t go through (might be their fault or it might have been a mistake, but you have to pretend you got the money and thank them anyway), and “Warm,” which is the best one but you usually have to suffer through colds or frostys before they’ll put you on the warm calling list, although sometimes you get lucky and do a whole shift of warms.

Sometimes it is interesting talking to the people, especially with their accents or if you get a little kid, and I’m trying to learn the differences between the states, because we call all over Oz. The Queenslanders are a lot more chilled out (one guy was saying “mate” to me over and over again, and lots of the women call me “luv”) but I seem to have more trouble with South Australia, although that’s probably just a coincidence so far. I’ve been working on my “customer rapport” so I’ve been asking everyone about the weather, which is universally pretty hot, but sometimes people will expound about how they had a storm recently, or how the sun is going down, or that fortunately they have the air-conditioner running so they’re okay.

It is kind of cool to see how much money I’ve raised, right now I’m averaging about $100 an hour, although sometimes that’s much lower (if only I could make that much for myself) and I also stay entertained by keeping track of some of the funnier calls. Once I overheard “Under the Sea” playing in the background, and a few times people have thought I was someone else and have said random things on the phone, like “Hiiiiiiiiiiii Mum!” or “How’s my darling girl?” Then I have to try not to laugh as I say, “Hello this is Annie calling on behalf of the Kids Cancer Project” or whatever.

One weird and creepy sidenote (which I’m counting as good luck) is that I’ve made exactly 13 pledges on 6 out of the 11 shifts that I’ve worked since I started keeping track. I think this bodes well for my birthday this year...

Thanksgiving and Week 5 (can’t believe I’ve passed a month!)

Happy Thanksgiving! I did my best to do Thanksgiving this week, and most of my ingredients went towards that aim (I don’t normally buy dates and crushed pineapple).

1.       Mangoes (on sale again yay!)

2.       Walnuts

3.       Dates (for the Thanksgiving cranberry relish)

4.       Celery

5.       Oranges

6.       Croissant (an impulse buy to better endure call centre work in the morning)

7.       Crushed pineapple (relish)

8.       Baguette (for stuffing)

9.       Ginger beer

10.   Sparking apple juice

11.   Cranberry sauce (couldn’t find fresh/frozen cranberries so I had to suffer the substitute, since it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without cranberries)

12.   Roast chicken (we bought it straight out of the oven!)

13.   Gravy mix

14.   Carrots

15.   Broccoli

16.   6-pack of mini mince pies (these are absurdly cheap and I’ll have to be careful not to buy them every week!)

17.   Strawberries

18.   Mini pavlovas (which are like meringues)

19.   Whipped cream (so much yum)

Acquired:

1.       2 eggs (which disappeared after a few days, I suspect they fell out of my bag and broke, sadly)

2.       Flour

3.       Milk

4.       Butter

5.       Sugar (a bunch of Frenchies left behind all their crepe materials – it’s hilarious, pretty much every night there’s a different group of French people making crepes)

6.       Parmesan cheese

7.       Apples (which was awesome because I wanted them for the cranberry relish anyway)

8.       Raspberry jam

9.       Pasta and sauce mix pack

10.   Cereal

11.   Rice

12.   Peanut butter (from Ting who just left for Melbourne)

13.   Instant noodle soup (which I will save when I need to eat in a big hurry)

Seriously good leftovers luck this week, I also scored a museum pass and an internet pass and some orange and mango juice that I just drank at the moment.

Thanksgiving was very nice. I started making stuffing (on the stove) and mashed potatoes and then met up with Kayleigh (the British girl who was in my first hostel room) and we went to the store to buy the last ingredients, like gravy mix, roast chicken (no turkeys except the frozen variety), and dessert. The pies and cakes looked weird, and there weren’t any pumpkin things anyway, so we got mini-pavlovas instead and topped them with strawberries and cream, which was pretty awesome. 

I was sad, though, because my favourite Thanksgiving dish is this cranberry relish fruit salad thing, and I can’t make it yet because I couldn’t find cranberries. My mission this upcoming week is to locate some and make the relish, since I already bought the other ingredients. Still, though, it was a good feast, and I was thankful that I had a friend to share the food, even if she did boil the vegetables (carrots and broccoli) in a typical British way (lol). Check out the spread in the hostel dining room!

Just a few words about how thankful I am to have a chance to be in a country as ridiculous and awesome as Australia, but to still be able to contact family and friends from afar. I’ve had a pretty good time so far, but I’m hoping for some really exciting stuff in the New Year, when I can get out of the city and explore the rest of the continent (and still revisit QLD, of course). Thank you for reading about my exploits, and much love to all!

Many Manly Lifeforms

Again this is delayed because I got lazy about selecting the best photos. I went to Manly Beach a few weeks ago to chill out after the week of flyering and to see some nice views. I’d been there before and remembered it fondly, even if it is a bit touristy. It was the first time this trip that I’d been on a ferry, which was fun but would have been better if the weather hadn’t been a little dodgy. Here’s a classic backwards glance of the harbour and you can see the cloudy skies.

 

I enjoyed a quick fish cocktail (chunk of fried fish) before I got on the boat and then couldn’t resist trying some funky chocolates at the candy shop inside the Manly Wharf after the 30-minute ride. I wanted to do the “Manly to the Spit Walk,” which I thought I had walked before but actually I had been to the North Head Walk instead. I kind of feel like the North Head Walk has better views, but that could be memory playing tricks, and also because it was a much nicer day and I had barely arrived in Sydney so it was a lot more exciting. Anyway the Spit Walk headed from the Wharf all the way along the coast to this bridge connecting the shore to the spit. Here you can see the main Manly area at the beginning of the walk.

It started off meandering along the urban coastline, but then wove in and out of a few parks and beaches. At one point I crossed a mini bridge over a stream that was flowing out of someone’s (very nice and green) backyard and got my first reptile pics of some water lizards basking on the rocks nearby.

After a while hugging the coastline I went through a nice stretch of restoration area where they were eliminating non-native species and encouraging the native ones. I love the shapes of the eucalyptus trees, they’re so squiggly, and they reminded me of the funky paintings that people did of the trees when the Europeans first came to Australia and were kind of confused about how the trees worked (but actually). I haven’t been back to any of the museums since my quarter abroad, but I plan on at least checking out the free art museum in the Botanical Gardens next time I make it over there (and when the weather’s nicer).

Some of the protected areas were supposed to help out the endangered population of Little Penguins on Manly. They’re not sure where the best habitat is for them so they’re trying to protect different areas to boost the population. Of course I didn’t see any, but it was nice knowing they were out there somewhere close. I did see some cool Banksias that looked especially fluffy and you can see the seed pods buried in the fluff.

Finally I entered part of the Sydney Harbour National Park which was a much larger stretch of protected land (no dogs allowed). As well as seeing some nice vegetation, I also saw a lot of pretty birdlife, especially these yellow honeyeaters that were searching for nectar inside fluffy red flowers. I’m not sure what kind they were, but I think I saw two different varieties because the black and yellow seemed to be in two different places, although I’m not sure since I only got a one decent picture.

Topping up on the reptiles, flora, and avian life, I also got a few nice views after some trekking uphill through some of the drier sections of the woodland (where all those yellow birds were hanging out). I still think the North Head views were better, but it could have also been the light that made this less spectacular.

I found an overlook point a little further on that was just above a canopy that seemed to be run by currawongs. They were making such a racket that I took a few sound recordings and listened to them for a while. They’re so funny sounding and yet look so serious, due to the black colouring (although anyone who has heard mutton birds will corroborate that the oddest voices lurk in the most unlikely places). Here’s one of the bold black beauties.

 

Towards the end of the park there was this open area that looked randomly cleared and damaged until I realized that it was a historic aboriginal site. There were a bunch of engravings of different animals on the rock floor that were who-knows-how-old. Some were kind of hard to see, but they had diagrams of them and they were all encircled with big logs so that you wouldn’t step on them. There was a kangaroo that was too big to fit inside my camera angle, a small long-necked bird, a part of a whale that I couldn’t really distinguish very well, some boomerangs that were mostly invisible, and a few fish. 

They were all really cool, although the fish were the easiest to see and about the only ones that showed up well in a photo. It was funny because the area was called Grotto Point, and I visited Grotto Canyon in the summer with Jessica and we saw pictographs there, so there must be something about the name Grotto that means there will be cool ancient designs (although I suspect that the Australian engravings were just a bit older than the Canadian pictographs!)

After leaving the park the final km or so of the walk hugged very close to the water – so close, in fact, that there was a separate path laid out up hill in case of high tide! I took my shoes off and walked barefoot along the beach for that stretch, which was relaxing. As I started back on the last part of the path, shoes on, I was just thinking that I had yet to see any non-flying mammals (I have seen the fruit bats, if I haven’t mentioned them yet) when I saw movement to my left and watched a rat-like critter hiding in the bush run across the path and across a fallen tree limb. I’m pretty sure it was actually just a white rat, so I still haven’t seen any marsupials or monotremes (the really fun stuff) this trip, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t adorable!

I made it to the spit and saw the bridge, then realized that I was now about 10km from the ferry, since the walk was only one-way, so I took the bus back to the ferry and made the crossing in darkness. No pics since it started drizzling. I might return to Manly when the weather’s a bit better, but it was still a nice walk and especially after all those days spent in the heart of the city.

Dreams...Not to Be Confused with the Dreamtime

This is a completely random post highlighting some of the weirder dreams I have been subjected to recently (mostly during the flyering week because I haven’t remembered the later ones). 

1.       Daniel Craig is Watson, some random person is Sherlock (although Watson is really running the show) and I am some mysterious helper person who solves a murder that happened in the Upper Floor Humanities room at the Northwest School (it had something to do with the old bathrooms and the evidence was in this mark on the door jam that no one else noticed)

2.       I have a younger sister who is suddenly into voodoo and I have to stop her, but she sets up this elaborate booby trap thing that I have to survive, sort of like Buffy mixed with the Hunger Games

3.       At some point before the whole voodoo thing happened, Benedict Cumberbatch came over for dinner and we chatted about what was going to happen in the next Sherlock episodes (unfortunately I don’t remember)

4.       I join the cast of the New Girl, which is rather weird since I’ve only seen half an episode, but we are living in a house on the beach and Zoey Deschanel is helping me with my wardrobe before I take a walk along the coast

5.       I am one of the chickens in Chicken Run (complete with claymation and the nerdy Scottish chicken complaining about “thrrrrrrust”) and help us escape in our plane, although the second time the dream replays I’m in a pond with a friend and we escape in a van…it was a lot more vague

6.       I’m doing a group project that has something to do with tubes and soil and glow-in-the-dark goo, but we haven’t prepared out presentation yet and we’re stressed about when we’re going to do it…also at some point in between one class and the next I end up in a museum at night with a flashlight and all these creepy masks 

7.       Gar there was another good one that I can’t remember…

Anyway I don’t know why all the celebrities turned up, since they don’t usually infiltrate my dreams. Daniel Craig at least makes sense, since there are tons of Skyfall posters all over the city, and I saw them all the time when I was flyering. But the others are just weird…