Previously on Adi's Blog: - Adi had started work as a street fundraiser, you know the kind of person on the street that everyone tries to avoid like the plague, but he was doing pretty well at this and was selected for a road trip the next week, he was also waiting to hear from his last employers about being paid and if he could do any weekend shifts. Adi was also living up the night life enjoying places such as Scruffy Murphy's!

As I said on my previous blog work out on a free BBQ on the beach with free food and drink. I headed down there with a girl on my team and who I worked with called Pia. We met the rest of the guys and proceeded to drink, chat and enjoy the BBQ. I decided to cut the evening short as I was on the road trip the next day and needed to pack and everything. So unfortunately I missed the house parties that followed.

The next day I collected the car from the car park, oh yeah because I was the closest to the city I was nominated to pick the car up and store it for the night in Sydney until the road trip the next day. Sounds easy right? Not at all. There is absolutely nowhere to park in Sydney. There are car arks but none that specialise in 24 hour parking, so parking the car cost me a grand total of $84, or in English about £50 maybe a tad more. Anyway I got the car and met the rest of the guys. Sam, she was our team leader, born in South Africa but moved to Australia at an early age. She was only 20, but had been with the company for 9 months and new the role inside out. Then there was Roxy, 20, who was an English backpacker from Brighton, she had been with the company a while. Ben was another part of the team, he was a tall Australian guy who started a day before us, he was older than the rest of us so got the affectionate nickname of poppa bear. And lastly making up the team was Forde another Australian who started on the same day as me. We set off to Mirimulba or something like for our first destination. It would take seven hours to get there. We played games to pass the time and me and Ben shared the driving. Eventually we got there rustled up some pasta and had an early night so we would be ready for Monday. However, it was the night of the Manchester United vs. Liverpool game, so I stayed up and got updates of the game from BBC Sport and wasn't disappointed with the 2-1 win.

The next day we split up, the boys would go to Bega, the next town known for its Cheese factory and the girls would stay in Mirimuluba. I had heard a lot about travel trips and that people do well on them and that's where you can hit high number of sign ups. But for me that first day I struggled. I got one sign up but it was pretty late on in the day at the point where I was getting very frustrated. The main story of the day though was Forde, he thought he had signed up a chap called Jeff, but when he realised he had to give bank details he made some excuse and said he would be back in 15 minutes, needless to say Jeff never turned up again but this didn't stop Forde from thinking he was coming back all day. That night we had a lovely BBQ by the beach with a few glasses of red wine goon. We found some mussels on the beach so I tried my first ever BBQ mussel, they were OK a bit slimy and salty though.

The next day we split up again, me and Ben would tackle Mirimuluba and Sam, Roxy and Forde would go Bega. Forde was probably still waiting for Jeff. I didn't get any sign ups this day but had a fun day. Ben only got one and the girls only got one between them the day before so I think that relaxed me more as there was no pressure to do well. This was unlike Canberra, the Australian capital, our next destination where all we heard from our managers was that it was a goldmine and we were likely to get a few sign ups. I managed to get three on the first day; however two of these didn't count as they were younger than 21. The next day I managed to get two though. The problem I found with Canberra was that there were so many other charities there. People would literally be running a gauntlet down the main street. If we didn't get them Australian Care would, or Child Fund, or one of the other charities. The charity wars between the groups however did make me laugh as we all battled for the best positions. Child Fund were part of our Fundraising People Group so on the Wednesday night we had a big BBQ with some red wine goon and also got to see a wild possum. We also thought it would be a good idea to climb over the fence and go in the closed swimming pool. Luckily we didn't get caught, but on the fence I did see the biggest spider I have seen in Australia up to yet. I could even see its fangs.

The last day of the trip saw us go to Nowra, it was a small town and I managed to get one sign up, a joiner called Peter, to end my week on a 5 total. It wasn't ad but could have been better. We drove back and I eventually got back at about 10.30 after dropping everyone off and taking the car back to the office for a young Scottish girl called Jenny who needed the car for the next day. I got lumbered with that job again as I lived closest to the office. I got home and Christy was there. A girl I met in Crown Hotel when working on the banana farm, so me, Lauren, Christy and Haruka decided to go for a few drinks to catch up. James and Tom stayed in as they were still job hunting.

The next day we decided to do a mini pub crawl, we did think about pub golf but some people couldn't really afford it, so me Lauren and Christy headed around a few pubs where we lived. That night we thought we would try something different t Scruffy Murphy's and headed to Scary Canaries which was a decent night out. The next day Lauren left to go back to Innisfail and work on the Banana farm, she was having no luck finding a job in Sydney so decided to go back and earn some money on the farm before heading to Thailand. The rest of us just had a chilled out day. Me and James did go and watch the football though but I wasn't let in for wearing flip flops so we decided to watch the game on the laptop back at home.

I was back at work the next day, we had a team meeting and then a presentation about the charity from a UNICEF representative called Adrian, great name! We then got started we was on a road near my flat and managed to sneak one sign up. People were under intense pressure now though and people who were not performing were getting let go. For me it wasn't really motivating me and I only ended up with three sign-ups for the week and one of them was a fake. How you ask? Well let me tell you, on the Wednesday Brendan the campaign manager came to see me and told me that the next day I needed a minimum of two sign ups or I would be gone, fearing for my job I got Tom to come and sign up using a fake name. It worked a treat. I looked good getting a sign up, the form just wouldn't go through because they would think they supplied false information which apparently happens about 25% of the time anyway. So the pressure of the job was getting to me a bit, well probably a lot but I loved the job and the people I worked with. I would just have to see how things went.

I didn't have much time to worry about my job over the weekend as we had a very turbulent few days. We knew we had to leave our flat soon but thought we would be able to look for something over the weekend. Our landlady on the other hand had other ideas; she said there was a viewing on Saturday morning so needed us out Friday night. All of the hostels close by were full because of Australia day and we didn't have a flat sorted. So we ended up sleeping on Haruka's sofa for the night, not really pleasing her housemates. The next day we had a few viewings and decide on one we liked but we could not move in until the next day. Haruka kindly said we could stop at hers one more night, with everything pretty much sorted we went out to celebrate Australian Day we went to a b to try and enter a pie eating contest but we unfortunately missed it, but did make it for the crab racing, where one eyed Willie won Tom and I$5 worth of vouchers and $25 cash. We were getting a bit drunk, so decided to go back Haruka's for a tactical sleep, this however didn't go to plan. Half way through the sleep Haruka's landlord came round and chucked us out. He was a bit of an arse and all of a sudden we were left homeless, we spent 3-4 hours trying to sort something but we were having no luck until and it looked like we would be sleeping in the park for the night with the Aboriginals. Things wasn't going well, The flat we also wanted to move into was having none of it, I think he didn't like the idea that we were English and only wanted Asian people in his flat which I found very racist. We kept trying to find somewhere to stay until we had one last hope - Elephant Backpackers and they came to our rescue! We got a taxi there and by the time we got there we were in no mood to go out so we decided to watch a film and chill out and perhaps missing out on Australia's biggest night out.

The next day we woke up to rain, we thought it might be one of them days again but things turned around we managed to find a flat. It had a few minor tings wrong like the door k*** kept falling off and the tap didn't really have switch but it was cheap and we had a roof over heads and that was the main thing. We bought a box of goon to celebrate and then headed out to Scruffy Murphy's for a night out.

We woke up all a bit worse for wear the next day, but we had to be out of the hostel by 10. So we packed up our stuff and moved to our new flat we got settled in, did a big shop and then I settled down to carry on my tradition of watching the Royal Rumble every year! I wasn't happy with the result though. The rest of the day we had a chilled out day. Putting the fairy lights up and doing some washing was about as hard-core as it got.

So I realise this blog has mostly been about work, but I promise that will stop after this paragraph for the simple reason that my time as a fundraiser as come to an abrupt end, simply my results weren't up to scratch and even me fighting all the way to the end and giving it my best shot wasn't enough. Ultimately I think it was my lack of belief in myself that let me down, I thought I could do the job but never believed I could. The pressure also got to me and I couldn't cope with the thought of the axe coming at any point, in my point of view that wasn't great motivation from the campaign manager as it made me more uptight and desperate on the streets but I can't really blame anyone for my exit other than myself. At the end of the day though I gave it a good shot. I got to go on a travel trip and experienced all the highs and lows so don't regret it for one minute. I also learnt so much, which I can take with me in all sorts of aspect of my life and met some truly inspirational and awesome people who I will definitely keep in touch with.

So as they say as one chapter ends another one begins…………..

Stay Safe and Take Care

Adi

xx