On the 26^th of November my contract came to an end and I was once more free of the shackles of work. I would have stayed on but as I maybe mentioned before, they changed the job description and I was not too keen in pursuing that direction.

Saturday the 27^th was the first Saturday in a long time that I was able to enjoy without having to spend half of it at work. I woke up at the usual time, had breakfast and then went back for forty winks. After the second cup of coffee I headed to the shops for some food and then returned home and began to just veg.

Guilt began to well up in the brain but I soon put it back in its place. I no longer have an agenda, I have lots of free time and I think I deserve to just chill for a bit.

I’ve had a week to consider my new lifestyle and I like it. To no longer have to look at the clock, and to do what I want to whenever that may be. But it has not been as easy this time to break the routine of work. Part of me is feeling that I am on holiday and I need to get all those jobs done and then I realise that this is my life for the next few months. I will be happy to cruise along like this until maybe the end of January and if I can find part time work to cover expenses then that will be fine.

I’m already worrying about money and I started to fill out an online claim with the brew and when I got to the asset test it struck me that I doubt that they will give me any money anyway due to the current bank balance, so I abandoned that and went back to reality. If I only plan to take a few months off I would rather not get bogged down with the bureaucracy of government as they will only frustrate me and upset my chi

Glen, me plumber, arrived on Monday to finish of his part and then I could get on with finishing off the new laundry and toilet. I’m quite pleased with the result although it’s still not finished. I ran out of material on Wednesday and I need to get the electrician in before I can complete the sheeting. I’ll try to get him in this week. The good thing is…..I have plenty of time and can finish it this week or next.

One area I really want to focus on is the garden. Last year before I started work I had only been home for about 4 months and I had no time to look at the garden. I started the renovations downstairs and that took most of my weekends and days off, so now it’s time.

I want to also get back to previous pursuits, the bike, reading, writing and walking………all those things that I have had to put on hold over the past 12 months.

We always feel anxious when we step out of our comfort zone and head in a new direction. Over the years I have done this a few times and it never really gets any easier because you will always doubt yourself right up to the minute of that decision. So far my choices have worked out……….

My contract with my employer expires on Friday. One month ago I got an email which I may have eluded too, which thanked me for my contribution and then proceeded to ask me to give feedback. This pissed me off severely……..At least have the decency to have management talk to you first before sending out an exit email.

I had to re-apply for the position, well that’s ok and so I did. I got my interview and it went well apart from me losing the plot slightly about the management. Ah well….. one must vent every so often. I was asked to give my decision by Monday on what I wished to do? Stay or go?

On Monday I told them that I would stay and then immediately regretted saying that.

This morning (Tuesday) my feelings were confirmed when I walked in and sat at my desk………I don’t want to be here anymore. An email I got from the regional manager outlined her expectations for the coming year. Some of those expectations were:

Cold calling potential builders,

Having to acquire 15 trade accounts

Report your progress every fortnight and have a zoom meeting to discuss

To increase sales targets to increased budgets

More virtual consultations with customers and builders

And at the same time look after all the retail customers that come in throughout the day and all for the basic wage. I didn’t sign up for all this and it’s worth more than 50 grand a year.

Now some people might just continue to work and let the shit hit the fan further down the track, however I don’t need the added pressure and I am not chasing sales. My head is saying stay and my heart is saying run…………so I ran. I was never that keen to work here anyway and 12 months is enough and may I add I have done rather well.

Of course having the money makes a difference but I feel that my mental health is beginning to suffer because I have not done many of my passions over the last year and to a lesser extent having to listen to the bullshit and paranoid ramblings that often take place at work. There is enough noise in the world, in the media and I don’t want to go to a workplace where the conspiracies are loud and strong. That was one of the great benefits of living in China; being cut off from the outside world……Ignorance can be bliss……I would really like to get back but in the meantime I will return to a simpler life and to have more time to myself. Life has been too busy the past year and I have not had the energy or the time to pursue other interests.

The contract was for 12 months and I really expected, maybe naively, that the world would be open for business but it just seems to be getting worse.

I don’t think I will get work before Christmas and I don’t really want to start looking yet, but if I see a part time job that suits I will certainly go after it. I might be able to sign on and get a few quid which would help, at least that would cover the monthly bills.

But the sense of relief I feel now about my decision makes me know I made the correct choice and the future does not worry me, well not yet 🙂

Increase your sales,

Cold calls in fact,

Stuff that, I ain’t doing that!

Not what I signed up for.

My head says stay,

My heart says go,

And so I chose the latter.

The contract is closing,

Only a week to go,

Mixed emotions ebb and flow,

My only concern is money.

Buy some bargains, buy at cost,

Only a week to go before the opportunity is lost,

Still don’t know my fate.

Mind you,

I’m looking forward to the long walks,

Also looking forward to the long talks,

To reading, writing, riding and that freedom that was lost,

My only concern is the money.

I’ll go to the brew

Wait in a queue,

Get judged by the pencil pusher minion,

Get the third degree and the rules,

No respect for us old fools.

Marking the days till the new phase,

Buy the flight, book the hotel,

Mind you packing the hoose up is going to be hell,

Well I still don’t know if I will have a job at the end of the month, no information has been forthcoming as of yet. Life seems to go on fairly normal and even although the manager has had a few meetings with management on branch matters, I still don’t know if I have been the subject of any of those conversations.

I’ve had a look around for work and there ain’t much about and as much as I am looking forward to a holiday, I think that it would be better to stay put if I can. I’ll be able to continue with my renovations and not dig into the kitty; mind you I am going to buy what I need through the company while I can still get cost pricing. I’ll miss that if I leave.

I’ll also miss to a lesser extent some of the weird conspiracy theories that my long haired drug smoking middle aged colleague comes away with. This week there have been some “Work cover” workers helping out in the warehouse and the hippy and “The Old Guy” have been deep in the mire. It seems that the Rothschild’s, the wealthy Jewish banking family, that have a hand in almost everything in the world including founding members of the Illuminati  ………well did you know that they now live on the dark side of the moon. My long haired friend’s new friend’s wife works in some secret government agency and she knows for a fact that this place exists.

My hippy friend has also convinced himself that he has cancer and will die soon. Bowel cancer to be exact, even although the tests so far have shown nothing more than low iron. In the past 12 months I have not seen him eat anything remotely healthy. Every day he will get some sort of junk food, burger, chips, kebab, pizza, chocolate and to wash it all down either iced coffee or soft drink. Everyone tells him that if he changes his diet and eats real food then he will generally feel a whole lot better and his body might actually repair itself. I did not know that hamburgers were the same as fresh meat………..you can’t argue with stupidity.

The cost of all this junk bought every week must cost a fortune. But he tells everyone that he has plenty of money, except when it comes to a deposit for a house. He wants a house, he says. He bought $1400 worth of hash today, this will last him six months. It’s cheaper to do this because if he bought it every week then he would have paid nearly $200 more. Forward thinking for sure.

He spends most of his time at home playing computer games, mostly VR games or has he has described to us VR porn…….which is a whole other story. He has learned so many things about the female anatomy by immersing himself in the virtual and I am unable to impart most of what he has told me because it is quite disturbing.

He has an online dating app and he tells us that he only gets matched to ‘pigs or dogs’ He is no oil painting I may add. I can’t imagine anybody in their right mind giving him a date and then again he wouldn’t really know what to do with a real person. The sad thing is he is just the tip of a worldwide epidemic of nutters that have fallen down the rabbit hole believing every crazy conspiracy that comes along. I mean he likes Trump. I don’t think he is dangerous in any way but he is a rather sad creature that is 50 years old and has done almost nothing in the real world.

Last weekend was fairly busy. I finally got round to building the wall beside the garage door. I’ve done this to try and stop the rain from being pushed under the garage door when the storms hit from the south east. When they come from this direction they are extremely fierce.

I’ve only lined the external wall as yet, simply because I ran out of time and plus the fact I was knackered. These villa board sheets are a wee bit on the heavy side. I haven’t done this kind of work for ages and it was good to get back to the tools. It came up not too bad and the window that I picked up earlier in the year looks good.

I’ve still got so many jobs around the house which I have been unable to get to because of work, but that might all be coming to an end very soon. My contract finishes on the 26^th November and there is no guarantee that I will be kept on. In fact I think the job has been promised to someone else and the reason I think this is because I got a termination survey email sent to me to thank me for my time with the company and to also ask why was I leaving. An automated process but it would have been nice to actually have the line manager come to me first and give me the heads up, but he told me that he was completely unaware.

The area manager has been pushing for months for me to take up 15 builders accounts to increase sales and I have casually ignored it simply because there is more than enough work during the day to deal with and there ain’t no way I will be taking work home when I’m only on minimum wage, they can fuck right off.

And so I guess they will find some other mug more willing. I always knew that I was only here for 12 months and I thought that by this time the world would have been in a better state where travel was possible once more but as we all know, this is not the case. I wish to return to China and that is just not possible.

I would really like to work until next July and then pack my bags once more. If I don’t get kept on I will be able to survive without a job but I would rather keep the money I have squirreled away over the last 12 months. Mind you not all is lost; they still might keep me on.

If I can find part time work around 25 hours a week then that would be ideal. I would have more time at home to work on projects and still have money coming into pay the bills, so this is plan B. My original Plan B was to win lotto but this is now Plan C.

The local borders within Australia will be opening soon and if I get laid off then it will be a good opportunity to head to Sydney and catch up with a few old friends that I haven’t seen in donkeys. I’ll first have to get a wee bit of maintenance done on the old Ford but nothing too serious. It will be good to do a road trip again.

The yellow Ford stopped at the pump,

Music blaring, thump thump thump,

Blonde bint at the wheel, hair like straw,

I’m thinking to myself, “this is someone’s Ma”

She’s oot the car and what a sight,

Our eyes meet, shit what a fright……

Saggy tattoos on wrinkled arms,

One of her more beguiling charms?

Chest to her knees, arse big as a bus,

Latex leggings about to burst,

Big shiny cowboy boots, whit a mess,

Black metal singlet, dark glasses too,

This old bint must be nearly 82,

Wurzle Gummage springs to mind,

A scary sight at any time,

Strutting her stuff reliving her youth,

Even although she’s a bit long in the tooth,

Her mind is young, her body old,

The Ford looks good and the colour bold,

She don’t give a Fuck,

She lives life to the full,

Mooth like a sewer, but she ain’t no fool,

Sniggers abound, me included,

Am thinking to myself that she might be deluded,

But each to their own, be young at heart,

You don’t want to end up a fogey old fart,

I had a week off from work and it was great. I was finally able to get many jobs around the house and garden done which I have been putting off for weeks. I put some 5% window tint on a few of the windows and what a difference it makes.

I got new security screens fitted to a few of the windows and got a new sliding door, which is bloody marvellous. I can now lie in my hammock with the door opened and the bugs or anyone else for that matter can’t come in.

I stumbled upon cheap velvet curtains at a place called “Silly Solly’s”, a bargain $5 shop. On Sunday, I went to visit Ann & Trevor and they were kind enough to take the curtains up for me so that I could hang them, and don’t they look good,…………the curtains that is J

In the garden, I picked up a quarter of a cube of crusher dust and a cube of mulch. The mulch was easy but the crusher dust was tough. The crusher dust was for the paving, which is still not finished but getting closer to completion. I have had quite the workout this week and I am sure I have lost a few kilos along the way. This is the way life was before I started this job thing and I must admit I could easily lapse back into this lifestyle; I just need a source of income or a lottery win…..not too much……

Being at home within my four garden walls was just brill……not having to go anywhere was just brill………….not having to work was just brill and not having to talk to the public was fuckin’ great!!

No agenda, no schedule, no problems. The only downside that I can see is when the summer weather kicks in and the temperature creeps towards 40c, but hopefully the downstairs area will be sufficient to repel the heat.

Got the old computer upgraded a little. New SSD and 2TB drive along with Windows 10. This is the first time since 1995 that I have bought a legit copy of Windows. Windows 95 came with the option of either 13 floppy discs or 1 CD Rom; I waited for the CD Rom. Mind you I still have a set of Win 3.1 floppy discs, which might be worth a few bob one day.

So the old computer is running a lot better I may add. The SSD makes such a difference as it only holds the operating system and everything else is on the new 2TB drive. But I think I’ll end up upgrading the processor and motherboard soon too. I’ll use it for a few weeks and see how it goes, but it is certainly better than before.

The old PC is still running a dodgy copy of Win 10, so I’ll have to try the new product key to see if it will accept it and activate it, if not no drama I’ll format it and do a clean install. However, before I do that I will have to back up the drives as they have a shed load of info on them.

I am going to use the old pc for the Torrents and stuff because if any nasty bugs infect it, I will not have me other stuff compromised in any way and of course, it will begin to annoy me because it is now so much slower than the upgraded one. When I switch it on, I could go and make a coffee and drink it first before it is ready to work and the old IDE hard drive is slogging away making a hell of a racket, whereas the new SSD is almost silent and so much quicker.

Next door are cunts, noisy cunts, inconsiderate cunts and the list and expletives could be endless. I might have mentioned before about their obsession with making noise, well today was one of those days. It began very early in the morning, around 4 am when they fired up the old Nissan Patrol, as they do, and let it run for 10 minutes or so before setting off. This happens every time they drive it.

They have an old diesel Patrol and a Petrol Patrol. For some reason for the last year or so they have let them both run allowing exhaust fumes to waft in all directions including into my house.

Inconsiderate bastards!

Everyone has to cut the grass at some point and oh joy this morning they had to do there’s. It’s my day off; I don’t want to listen to the noise they make, but more so I don’t want to have my clean washing which is out on the line being covered in the shit that gets kicked up when they use the blower to clean their yard. They have dogs, 3 dogs in fact, which is one more than they should have. Dog hair and debris is scattered all over their yard and when they use this fuckin’ blower it sends it up and over the fence and towards my house, my garden, my washing………cunts.

I’ve been here for 17 years and the routine is the same.

1, Use blower to clean up yard and send all the shite over the fence or out onto the road. Spend at least 20 to 30 mins to complete.

2 Use whipper snipper to do edging.

3 Use blower once more to clean up debris.

4 Use Lawnmower,

5 Use blower to clean up debris.

Do you see anything wrong here? Fuckin’ Idiots………

Maybe if the gods are listening they could maybe defecate on their house from a great height, but make sure you miss mine……….

Last week in the world, Australia upset the apple cart by buying new subs from America and the UK instead of the French. The French deal has been in place for many years and is worth a fair bit of money. The French are pissed off at this decision and you cannot really blame them. Australia, as usual, is easily swayed when making decisions and lately I feel many of the decisions they have made are shite. The fear and paranoia of America is spreading worse than Covid.

Australia has always wanted to play with the big boys, but no one really takes them seriously. Australia is the child in the room that wants to be an adult. They want to go to the parties and join in with all the old guys but they are just too young and naïve and an easy touch……..

They want to have a drink but they are too young to handle it and then someone offers them a beer and they get all excited and the bravado kicks in and they will do anything they are asked to do to curry favour.

America pretends to be the nice big brother but in reality, he is a psychopath. Australia wants to please its big brother so much and will always do what it can to make him happy, even over the last four years when he was really going off his rocker. However, underneath Big Brother has always been cunning, manipulative, psychotic and an all-round selfish bastard……….however wee brother still wants to please and can’t see the reality.

And so, when big brother says to his wee brother, “Tell the French go and Fuck themselves! You don’t want to buy their smelly diesel submarines; you want our shiny new nuclear submarines which are really really good”

“Ok where do we sign up?”

“Right here me boy…..”

Meanwhile Big Brother does not tell wee brother that they have just been conned into being cannon fodder in the event of a fight with the local gang, and plus the fact they have been conned out of their lives savings. They are so gullible……….remember the last time they bought some planes? That didn’t work out as planned…..

However, wee brother is too stupid to see the big picture and happily embraces the death eagle and invites him to come to his home and bring all your friends and at the same time Fuck the Dragon.

Not only has Australia annoyed the French, the rest of the neighbourhood ain’t very happy either and I am not sure that the Australian population is on the side of government. I thought the Pacific was a nuclear free zone.

As part of the deal there will be more Americans on Australian soil, not a good idea. You may as well paint a target on the country and send invites out to every radical on the planet. Mind you I remember them being so happy when they could finally announce that there had been a terrorist attack in Sydney, and they were so happy that they could finally join that club.

Only thing I like about America are the land yachts.

We need to keep America at arm’s length and not to support them with every whim that they might have. America just loves a conflict, especially when it’s far away from America. Remember it is a war economy……

I moved to Australia many years ago and was happy that it was far from the maddening crowd. We had a war monger in the name of Maggie. In Australia people were just enjoying the sunshine and the wide-open spaces, tickling a Koala and riding kangaroos.. In all those years, Australia has desperately tried to join the global community, to be part of something bigger but they just have not had the right qualifications. Right now they have the opportunity to join one of the most important global issues and that is climate change, but they would rather try to get into the Eurovision song contest instead.

For want of a better word, Lapdog comes to mind. This petulant, racist country can only associate with the same creed, not those pesky Asians, and they may as well get conned along the way.

Meanwhile senior government ministers are doing the rounds of neighbouring countries to rally support, for something. What a sorry bunch they are. Trying so hard to embrace their Asian neighbours but they don’t know how, it’s difficult to watch the awkwardness of them. Not one of them has a semblance of a personality; a smile seems as foreign to them as they try to keep their racist views under wraps.

On TV the other night I watched a discussion on the possibility of war with China. I lasted 5 minutes and had to switch off. How fucking stupid are they? Australia is like an ant by comparison. Yes the country is big but it has a population similar to that of Shanghai. Too many war mongers being allowed to comment so that they can get their 15 minutes of fame or better still make a quid. These “experts” are dangerous. And don’t think that for one minute America has its back.

China will continue to push and push and where that will end I don’t know. For years they have slowly impregnated countries by stealth and no one seems to have noticed or cared. They are like fungi in some respects and the root system lying beneath is extensive and no one can really quantify it. Their world domination is different to past empires that went out to conquer the world by shouting loudly and starting wars, no they come bearing gifts and set financial traps for the unwary.

We live in interesting and scary times. Social media gives a voice to the nutters and the tribes will emerge once more and if we are not careful the global community will fracture because it will become harder to distinguish fact from fiction……..