word up people! Soooooo, I'm ill again. Yup, 5 months in Oz and this is the THIRD time I've been ill, what the hell is going on? I reckon it must be all the moving around and I think this time it's been caused by a combination of the ice box air conditioning at work, no sleep, and my body trying to recover from 5 weeks of working 2 jobs on about 25 hours of sleep a week! I am a miserable little ball of snot. Sophie, Luci and Grainne, bet you wish I was sitting next to you now!!! You'll be pleased to hear that I have invested in some special Kleenex that contains Aloe Vera for my poor little Rudolph nose. Sadly I couldn't find any rose scented tissues, but you must remember that Australia is about 1 year behind us so no doubt they will be arriving here soon. Yes, this is going to be a random rambling email. Just to give you a heads up. So anyway! Two really great things have happened recently: (1) I quit my job at the car wash which means that I have gone from doing 70 hour weeks to just 40 hour weeks. I feel like I'm on holiday! It's amazing to actually be able to sit down without falling asleep. I'm not kidding! (2) I have finally moved out of that godforsaken hostel into a flat with 2 other girls. I can't tell you how amazing it is to be in a flat after 6 months of living in hostels. I'm not sure I can ever stay in a hostel again. And we have TELEVISION!!!! I can watch CSI again! This has made me very very happy! I'm living with my friend Jen and this other Dublin girl Michaela who works in an Irish bar in town. It's really cool as we all work pretty much the same hours (i.e. up all night, sleep all day) so we all hang out before work and eat cake and drink coffee. Yup, it's healthy all the way here! You'll be pleased to hear that my first purchase for the flat was a cafetiere. It went down a storm. I am a coffee snob. We just went to pay our landlord our rent for the flat. He's an alcoholic who sits in the pub all day. I'm not kidding, we go in to the pub at 11am to pay him. He was supposed to come round for a "flat inspection" last week and he said it had to be before 10am because the pub opens at 10. Oh my god. In case you're wondering, I'm not a little vampire because I have started attacking random backpackers' necks, but because my average going to bed time is now 6am. I had last night off and went to bed at 2, and it felt really early! Yup, my body clock is officially f***ed. But on the subject of men (which we weren't, but did you notice that?) Australia is officially rubbish, and Darwin is even worse. Apparently the ratio up here is something ridiculous like 8 men to every female, which sounds pretty promising right? But you haven't seen the specimens we're talking about. Your average Darwin man is about 45, with a biker beard, massive beer gut and a VB (Victoria Bitter) in a stubby holder (that's a beer cooler to you and me). Classy. The only 2 guys I have been interested in are this Scottish guy at work, who initially seemed quite promising but on closer inspection turned out to be a 20 year old druggy with a 30 year old girlfriend. And this army guy I know, otherwise known as "cute boxercise instructor", who is going to Afghanistan in 2 weeks for 7 months. Not exactly the most encouraging situation is it?! And on the subject of drugs, (which we kind of were), I have only recently realised what a complete drug and alcohol haven that club is! I was so naive when I fist started... I remember thinking that certain members of staff would be pretty quiet and uncommunicative when the night first started, and then about 1am they would suddenly be really enthusiastic and up for it. I thought they everyone was just having a really good time. But I now suspect that there may be certain chemical influences at bay. Especially on a Sunday night when everyone comes into the bar for free staff drinks and then mysteriously disappear off into the disabled toilet in pairs. And before you worry that little Sarah has succumbed to the temptations of being a gurning wide eyed mess, let me assure you that I am just sticking to my one bourbon and coke. But that place is so messed up that this guy who is always in the bar and hanging around was there on Sunday night, and he stayed afterwards for staff drinks. I wasn't quite sure how he fitted into the whole staff thing but that place is so cliquey and there's always random friends around so I just assumed he worked somewhere else. Then my friend told me that he is the official drug dealer for the club. So we have everyone: managers, security guards, bar staff, promo girls, drug dealer. Brilliant. Wow, that was a long paragraph! On a non druggy note, I was in our local paper last week: Northern Territory Times. Yup, I'm practically a celebrity now. Every day they ask a few local people their opinions on political affairs, and they came to the car wash to ask us if we would convert our cars to use LPG gas (the 2 big news stories on Australia - bananas are $12 per kilo and petrol prices are soaring. Exciting stuff huh?) I was like, I'm not Australian, I don't drive and I don't know what LPG gas is. I don't think you want my opinion! But they obviosuly just wanted a few photos of girls to put in the paper so they took photos of me and the Finnish supermodels and we were on page 12 saying that we would convert as it's cheaper. Check me out with my automobile expertise! And, hilarious, the same paper ran an article last week saying that TOT t*** Out Tuesday) which is on at our bar had been banned as there had been so many complaints about it being such a drunken sordid night. Apparently this is an old story and the night is still on, but there were so many really concerned guys asking me if the night had been cancelled. And some British guys wrote into the papaer saying they weren't coming to Darwin if it wasn't on! Yes, that's how sophisticated this town is. It is a total w**** of a night. We all have to wear our bikini tops and little shorts, they do $3 tequilas so everyone gets wasted, they have a wet t shirt competition and it's not unusual for random chicks to get up on teh stage and take their tops off just for the hell of it. Can you imagine this happening in The Mailbox?! I went into work last week and got told to go and work in Discovery which was unusual for a Thursday night, usually we only open the club on Fridays and Saturdays and you just work in teh bar the rest of the week. So anyway, I happily tripped in clutching my bar blade and was rather taken aback when I realised that there was some kind of porn show going on on teh stage, not unlike the sex show we saw in Thailand! I was like, what teh hell is that girl doing writhing around in whipped cream totally naked whilst about a million guys gawp from the side of the stage? Apparently it was the final of Miss Erotica 2007. And the girls were ROUGH! I realise that my emails may make my entire Northern Territory experience sound like one long porn show but I assure you it's not! At least, not all the time. The rest of my time is taken up with trying to avoid the cockroaches which are EVERYWHERE. In case you didn't know (and why teh hell would you?) The Northern Territory has no concept of seasons. They don't have a winter or summer, they have a wet season and a dry season. So this (the Aussie winter) is the dry season and when it turns to summer down south, the NT has the wet season, which basically means that it's really REALLY hot and humid. and it rains every day. The wet season apparently doesn't start until November/December, but we are starting to experience what's called "the build up" when it starts to get hotter and more humid, and there are more big ugly bugs around. I have killed 3 cockroaches alone in the last week. Just call me Indiana Shortt. Okay, this is yet ANOTHER essay and not even a very interesting one I have just realised. Apologies, I reckon I am delerious from one too many lemsips. Hope everyone is good and I miss you all lots and lots and lots and lots... Love little Sarah xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The non porn star xxxxxxxxxxx