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Hospitals, Christmas and
Wedding Bells!
Hey travel fans
Once again many apologies for the long time between stories but I’ve been rather
busy lately working and saving up for my travels. I hope you all had a great
Christmas and I wish you all the best for the new year. Christmas here was great
and I’ll tell you all about it later on in this issue.
For the past month or so I’ve been working on a huge motor yacht called the Lone
Ranger. It’s owned by an American billionaire and has an international crew,
they just travel around the world and meet the owner wherever he wants them to
be and flies there on his private jet – not bad for some eh! My job on board was
as a day worker and for the first 2 weeks I had to spend all day on a pontoon in
the sun grinding rust off the hull, sanding the hull, then re-painting the whole
hull (see my gallery to see how big this boat was). One day whilst working on
the pontoon I had to hang over the edge and tape up the side of the hull, with
my head a few inch’s above the water I spotted a jelly fish swimming by, it was
tiny but would probably
kill you but alas it provoked my usual reaction of screaming like a big girl,
pointing at the object and asking “what the fcuk is that?” and “will it kill
me?”. Oh yeah the waters are also infested with crocs too but I never saw any
thank god!. After we finished the outside of the boat we moved onto chipping and
grinding away rust on the inside of the boat, this was hard work as you
generally were in the sun all day and now it is summer here temperatures in the
day get up to 35 degrees, then you add on the humidity it really does get to
you,
luckily we were given bottled water all day. But the worst part was that there
is a no footwear rule on board which means that in the afternoon the deck is
very hot and uncomfortable to walk on, in fact the deck temperature was taken
one day on the afternoon smoko break and was measured at 78 degrees! Ignoring
all that stuff I had a great time working on board for just over 4 weeks, I made
some new friends (one of them has got my number and will let me know of any
similar work coming up and is also going to give me some guitar lessons), earned
$1000 (£400) a week tax free and the best part was finishing at 4pm
everyday then sitting round for an hour afterwards drinking free ice cold beer.
(Needless to say I was half-cut everyday when I arrived home hehe). The day
finally came for the boat to set sail to Sydney and for some it got a bit
emotional saying goodbye to everyone but that night we went to Yorkies Knob Boat
club and celebrated in style by having dinner with the rest of the day workers
then getting really drunk!
I’ve also had my first trip to hospital here in Cairns. One day working on the
boat a guest of wind blew some dust into my eye, I didn’t think anything of it
until I got home and noticed a dot just above my left pupil. So after work the
next day I went to the 24hr medical centre and it turned out I had a huge
foreign body in my eye (piece of steel to you and me) so the Sir Lankan doctor
poured some stuff into my eye to make it numb and proceeded to prod around with
a giant needle. Now this is where the fun starts, he gave me the biggest telling
off for moving my eye whilst he was trying to remove the object, the
conversation went something like this:
(put on an Indian accent if you like to add effect)
Doctor – Sir you must not move your eye
Taggie – Sorry
Doctor – Please stop moving your eye because you could go blind
Taggie – Sorry
Doctor – (really angry) Sir you must not move your eye
Taggie – Dude it’s a bit hard to keep still when you jabbing that needle in my
eye
Doctor – That’s it I’m sending you to hospital
So, he patched me up, sent me to A&E and charged me $130 for the pleasure of his
company. But in all fairness to him he did remove the bit of steel but because I
left it for a couple of days I had a rust ring in my eye which needed removing.
Let me tell you this driving around with an eye patch on is a very interesting
experience. Now Australian casualty is brilliant, I never had to wait more than
45mins to be seen (not like back in the UK eh where its hours, but I must say
that’s never a problem when your dad is a paramedic and you can use the
tradesman’s entrance
hehe). All the doctors in the hospital were English and the first one was from
Newcastle, I was chatting away to him whilst all the time having memories of
Slacky’s stag weekend, I had to hold back from saying “ah ya danni need a spoon
man, you get a sausage and move the beans around the plate like!” After 4 days
of
treatment on my eye I was finally given the all clear and my vision has not been
affected!
But working in the sun has its benefits, I’ve lost some weight and got a mint
tan hehe, am feeling like a Aussie now, all I need is a crappy hair cut and
white socks and I’m there!
We’ve been playing indoor hockey in the post season here, this is good fun but
very strange, the rules are a different to outdoor so everything that comes
naturally is basically the wrong way to play indoor hence we are bottom of the
league, Tim gets angry with me and its generally one of my mistakes that leads
to the opposition scoring, but at the end of the day it’s only a bit of fun and
it’s really good for your stick work.
I’ve also been to a gig here, I don’t know if you’ve heard of these back in the
UK but I went with Pumba to go and see Pete Murray and Ben Lee at the Cairns
Convention Centre. The gig was cool but I only knew one song by each of the
artists (even though they are massive over here) so I just spent my time
standing
there trying to look like I knew what was going off! If you want to download the
songs they are Ben Lee – Catch My Disease and Pete Murray – Better Days. They
pretty good so check them out.
 Now
I have some big news for you, Tim is getting married to the lovely Michelle in
September, they met in October and have just hit it off from the word go
and they are very happy together. Michelle is an Art teacher and part time
model, its strange walking round the casino and Cairns Central and seeing here
face advertising stuff. She has 2 great kids Julian and Alex who I get on with
well and we play on the swings and climbing frames down on the esplanade, I’d
say its good to act like a kid again but for those of you who know me well you’d
say that I’ve never really grown up anyway!!
I too have met a chick here in Cairns, we’ve been hanging out over the last
couple of
weeks and it’s been really good fun she loves south park, shouting at people out
of your car and kung-fu tourettes so as you can imagine we get on really well.
Her name is Ashleigh and she also plays hockey but for a different team. We went
to Port Douglas for a day out where we had lunch and she gave me some swimming
lessons in the sea (apparently its unique here for someone not to be able to
swim very well so I’m often the butt of some of the jokes hehe). Oh yeah it’s
not a good idea to take your phone into the sea, we were in the sea for an hour
and as I was walking back to the sun lounger I noticed that my pocket was heavy
so I reached around and found a very soggy phone but luckily my sim card
survived so I only lost a few numbers! She also took me on something called a
Christmas cavalcade which is an organized car ride around the city looking at
all the Christmas lights, just imagine 100’s of cars in a massive precession
driving round with lights flashing,
horns blearing and ribbons hanging off their cars, I was just speechless all
night I never seen anything like it!
Now here’s the part some of you like, I’ve had some more run-in’s with the local
wildlife here. First I was watching telly one night when I saw a flame flying
across the room, and to be honest it scared the sh*t out of me, I’ve never seen
a firefly before, it had me pinned to the sofa for a while before it flew out
the window. Then 2 days before Christmas I saw a gecko on the floor it was brown
and had white dots all over it, so I ran and got my camera and took a few
photo’s, then I shouted Tim and said “come have a look at this I’ve found one of
those Aboriginal Gecko’s”. Tim came and went to have a look whilst I put my
camera away, when I returned Tim had picked up the gecko and said have a closer
look. After a couple of minutes telling Tim to keep it away from me and uttering
phrases too hard core for these emails I plucked up the courage to have a look
and noticed that on its belly were the words “Made In China”. I was a bloody
kids toy, but to give it its due it was very realistic!
I’ve also become addicted to poker, Tim’s workmates play Texas Hold’em once a
month and it’s got me hooked. The first time I played I came last but last week
I finally figured out how to play properly and after 6 hours I came 3rd, I’d
have won too but we were so drunk we messed up a $42,000 hand which I think I
won but never mind, I got my $10 back so it’s all good. I got Tim a set for
Christmas and we’ve been playing ever since!
Christmas here was good, it was a very hot day which I’m glad about because the
two days before we had monsoon rains and I was going to get my money back if
 it
rained on Christmas day, but it didn’t so it was all ok. Christmas started off
early as Tim was going to take me to church like a good little boy and tell me
when to clap etc but we got the times wrong and missed the service. So we went
back to his parents and had a massive breakfast of magoes lychees, cherries,
eggs, bacon, sausages etc which was very nice. Then after the pressie giving etc
we had dinner at a hotel in town, now Christmas dinner is very different here,
instead of turkey they have cold meats and sea food because its just too hot for
anything else! That night we just chilled out at Tim’s new house with a carton
of beer, a few friends and got drunk in the pool! Then on boxing day we went to
Tim’s brothers Mick for a cocktail party, this was good fun as a few people from
hockey were there and we started making our own cocktails, needless to say I
don’t remember the rest
of the night, I think I went into town or something hehe! But I do remember
doing my new party trick which is just saying swear words because they love the
way I talk, oh I have to say “fish and chips” a lot too.
Many thanks to all of you at the debdale party who rang me whilst doing the
darkness it was much appreciated and who knows when I get back I may give
you an encore, we’ll have to see eh.
Don’t forget to check out my photo’s at
http://www.kodakgallery.co.uk/BrowsePhotos.jsp?&collid=84418788733 because
I’ve added loads more!
It just remains for me now to wish you all a happy new year and I hope you all
have a great 2006.
Live the dream
Taggie
©North Notts HC
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