My Long Week Ends

I am tired, very tired, and it's only going to continue, for quite possibly a very long time. But instead of pointing and laughing at my tiredness, lets point and laugh at my long week that was...

Monday was the first day of training, we started at 9:30am and I left around 7:45am and I got there in just over an hour, it started sprinkling at around 9:00am too, so great start to the first day of training. Parking was tough to find, and I ended up parking at some other building's visitor parking.
The first day was basic orientation, some lady from Datacom talking about the company and its policies and whatnot. She couldn't get the projector working so we had to make do with her laptop screen on a box, on a chair, which with my eyesight does not a happy David make. I didn't know anyone so I didn't really talk to anyone either, I bought some cold pasta lunch from a cafe shop with a shopkeeper who seems to always be excited. We met our technical mentors, or tech mentors for slightly short, who are basically the guys who will be training us on how to do our jobs. We our material which looks like a textbook, only in folder form and papers to sign so we get paid (my favourite part). Then our tech mentors proceeded to scare us with the many ways we could get fired, making us all glad we took this job. At 5pm we were set free, and my car was still in the visitors parking, not towed away or fined for staying hours upon hours, which is always good.
But the day wasn't finished yet, I still had my other training to go to, hybrid martial arts as I call it (HMA blog impending). The drive down was wraught with my keen sense of misdirection, talking wrong turns on two seperate occasions, but I managed to recover and arrive in time for training, which was tiring, but the good kind in that its fun. Then home at 9:30pm or so for a shower, late dinner, and internet trawling until sleep at 1am. Big mistake...

Tuesday I got up at 6:30am to leave at 7am to get to work/training at 9am. It took over an hour and a half this time, mainly because I decided to try another way, which ended up taking longer than it did yesterday, but I still made it on time, which is all that matters. Parked at the same visitor's parking with the intention of asking people where I could park later. Training once again was boring, technical stuff which I should be paying attention to, but it was like uni again, lecture lecture lecture, except that I should've been at uni but wasn't because of the compulsory training. Seems like you can't get away from it. But just like at uni where you soon find out ways to sleep without getting caught I too found out a way to sleep during training without being caught out by my tech mentor.
At lunch time I went to get gas because my car needed gas, otherwise I'd have a hard time getting home Flintstones style, but with the Easter long weekend coming up everyone in Australia wanted to get fuel too. So what would normally be a 5 minute job took 30 minutes to do, cutting into my lunch time. I had lunch alone, since I couldn't be bothered finding people to eat with.
Our tech mentor gets distracted easily, talking about being an ex-chef, cars and how Hillsong is a cult, a topic which took up 5 minutes. So that was 5 minutes for me to sleep.
We ended work at 4:30pm today, which was good as it gave me time to drive to the city for Japanese class. I went over the Harbour Bridge, costing me $3. Then I discovered once again how fun it was to drive in the city.
Want to go left? Well too bad, here's a No Left Turn sign for you!
Want to go into this street? Well tough luck, its One Way Only!
Want to park here? Well no dice, its a loading zone!
Want to drive here? Well go away, its a bus lane!
But eventually I get parking, in Market City as a last resort, $9 if entered after 5pm, yay!
Japanese class went well, drove friend home, so having company on the way back was good in keeping me awake and less tired than I'm allowed to be on the road. Home at sometime past 9:30pm, shower and late dinner followed by internet trawling with minimal Bigpond site research, then sleep at 1am. Still haven't learnt from my mistake...

Wednesday's drive still takes 1.5 hours, but i'm getting used to it. I'm still sleeping in class, crap, I'm calling it class now, thats how much it's like uni! I finally made contact! So I have acquaintances now, whether they move up to friendship status is dependant on whether we'll see each other anymore once work starts. I also found out how much we were going to paid today as well, through asking one of the acquaintaces, which tells you a lot about what I think about pay, which is that I don't care too much about pay rate right now, as long as I do get paid.
After training was home time, well, before that was training then bible study, then home at 9:30pm, shower and late dinner followed by internet trawling before sleep at possibly midnight if I remember correctly. I have a sore throat...

Thursday was the day we were to go to the actual workplace we'll be working at to buddy up with one of the workers to see how they work. But before that we had to go through work of course. So for the first hour of the day (9-10am) our tech mentor just talked about how working for Datacom can be a fun thing, then talked about his past work as a chef and all the things he did. Which was a total waste of time. Once we got to the workplace however was when the learning started. The first guy I sat with had the misfortune of having really long calls, 30+ minutes, so it was fun watching him throw his pen or drop his head when the customer says something stupid or obvious or a hybrid of them both. The second guy I was with was better, and seemed like a pro as he kept his calls relatively quick, which is what you want in this business. We got off at 5pm, and I had Japanese class at 6pm, so I had to rush to the city and stat! Unfortunately, everyone else wanted to rush into the city, and the harbour bridge took forever to get over, plus I took a different turn thinking I didn't need to pay the toll, but turned out that I needed to (strike one google maps!) so that was added time, then somewhere in the thick of it all I took another wrong turn and ended up on the freaking ANZAC BRIDGE! So I was heading out of the city! Made my way back and finally found parking in a 7pm onwards zone, it was 6:50pm by the time I got there so I suppose that was close enough. I ended up being 1 hour late for class, but fortunately we weren't doing much work, only a test, which I did pretty well in (meaning I didn't fail). Drive home with company once again, 9:30pm home time, shower and late dinner (I hadn't eaten anything proper since 12pm lunch) and then internet trawling until 1am sleep. Back into mistake mode, and sick for it...

Good Friday! Why? Because I didn't need to go to North Ryde for stupid training and because Jesus died! Dying isn't good but dying for our sins is because we get to be friends with God again, heaven, here I come! Today we had our combined Easter service, which is always something that is more for the chinese congregation than for the english, but still good nonetheless. Once again, I helped run the powerpoint, except I was asked to run it beforehand instead of being asked on the day like last year. Wasn't able to pay much attention, as people were in and out preparing for the children's ministry Easter event, which I should've been helping out with as well! After the service, which ended faster than former years, something people complained about we started getting ready for our kids Easter event. At 12pm kids starting coming in, kids we hadn't seen before, which made things all the more awesome. We had songs, a talk by Billy, an easter egg hunt that had kids running around everywhere at a fast pace and finally a pinata to finish things off! We had the type of pinata that you pull strings off, and if you pull the right one then you open the hole and lollies fall out!


Lollies!

After the event I went home for some rest, trawled the internets and a friend came over to bum for a bit. Being sick is never fun, I've been coughing a bunch and sleeping takes forever, which doesn't help my hybrid insomnia...

Saturday I slept in until 11am, which felt good, was going to go to two bbqs, a church one and a friend's one. Went to the friends one first but it hadn't started yet, and by the time it started, I'd have little time to go to the church bbq, which was a bummer. Bummed with a friend afterwards and stayed home for the rest of the day...

Sunday! Resurrection Sunday, the day Jesus came back to life to give us life through him forevermore! We were supposed to write letters to one of our missionaries in the Northern Territory during SonRise (Kids Sunday School) but wasn't able to because of special arrangements for the service at 11am. So we had the kids play with paint, making handprints on cardboard, just something fun for them. The 11am service was good, we had 8 songs as opposed to 6 songs like we usually have which was pretty cool and the talk was of course about Jesus' coming back to life, which I suppose some people find hard to believe but when you have reports of people seeing an empty tomb, followed by an alive Jesus, you can't dispute that! And yet people still do, what a fallen world we live in! After the service we had lunch, then M&M (Music and Ministry) practice, something we have every week, hopefully I'll be able to improve my guitar playing to eventually help play one day.
After M&M we had our usual "where do we go/what do we do" spiel which can end up going nowhere, and did go nowhere today, but I intended to go home anyway because I was sick and needed rest, and someone had to wash the dishes. Slept at 1:30am, the last time I saw the clock before coughing myself to sleep...

Monday, 9am my alarm went off, turned it off and didn't know what day it was or what I had planned. Checked the phone for the day, 'Monday', and today was the day of SYC reunion! But it took some time to get out of bed, but when I did it was *cough cough* all the way to church. Bryan drove to Olympic Park, and couldn't remember the way to Wentworth Common, but fortunately that didn't matter because we had changed locations to Bicentennial Park just when we got there, preparation get! Once people got here and all, and cooking started, and sports started, the whole reunion was great, though having more youths would've been better, it was almost 50/50 youths and leaders but everyone had a good time overall, I think. I didn't cough as much either, must be the outdoor air, or the company I had, or a combination of both. But here I am at home, typing this up, trying not to cough a lot, but still coughing...a lot. The rest of the day was fine, had dinner at cousin's house before going home to type this up. My long week full of daily outings is just going to continue onto next week, I better get better otherwise I'm going to have to call in a sickie into work training, and I don't want to do that, I've got a test on Wednesday!

Tired, Sick, Hybrid...Zzzzzzz...