Way Down in the Hold

I'm proud to report that both Tens and I have found some work, although at the moment I am still only getting scraps with a temp agency while Tenny does the full-time haul working for an Italian cafe called DiPierris, making 'flat whites', 'long blacks' and all the other imaginary coffees they love down under (Tenny revealed to me in expose fasion that all NZ coffee names are pretty much just variations on how much foam to put on top.. not very inspiring if you ask me).

But I had the pleasure of working 8 hours for the Stevedores on Tuesday unloading the good ship Rehua, pictured below, which docked in Nelson with its recent catch of Gurnard and Hoki.

Unloading a fishing boat is definitely grunt work, and it's probably the first job I ever had with a rule designed to keep you from dying (don't ever stand below a pallet of boxes as it is being raised out of the hold), but at the end of the day it really wasn't so bad, and the work format of 30 minutes 'smoko' break for ever hour down in the hold is pretty humane. The highlight of the day was definitely the airing of the safety video, which was given a shakespearean introduction by the boss. It went a little something like this:

(clears throat).. "fuck, alright, fuck, here is a fucking video. well it's a fucking safety video, and I know you're gonna be like fuck, this is fucking, but just fucking watch it, because it's the rules and if you want to work on the fucking site, well fuck. So fucking watch, and I'll fucking quiz you after".

Now that's a man who knows his audience..