Monday, June 2, 2008

空白

回台一個月了
心情也逐漸回到當時出國前一般的低落
過去的一年多感覺好遙遠
遠到好像不存在
像是一片空白

台灣的天都是灰白色的
不論晴雨
蔚藍的天空除了存在照片中
也就只有在心裡了

這片土地有太多令人不悅的人事物
但是我終究得留在這裡一輩子
再也離不開了吧

我仍舊在日復一日的空白裡
過著無趣的生活
偶爾想起異國的朋友
也只能遙祝你們平安快樂

我們
還有再見面的一天嗎?

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Last Few Days in Australia

I've left Horn Island for 2 days already. I was picked up by a friend, Gill, whom I met on Horn, at the Cairns airport, and stayed with her for 2 days at her home in Innisfail. Innisfail is a town about 85KMs in the south of Cairns. It's a beautiful place with green, lush mountains and rivers.

I also met her neighbors, Emily, who's an elder lady at the age of 83 and she's a very nice person, and Sue, who's devoted to animal conservation, and she's showed me 3 wallabies. Gill is really a very nice person. I'm so blessed to know all of them. Gill even drove me back to Cairns this morning. Thank you very much, Gill.

I found that I feel alone in Cairns. It's been more than 3 and a half month since the last time I travel alone. But because I had to proceed tax return and change some Japanese yen, I have to spend at least 1 or 2 days in Cairns. I found that there's no tax office in Cairns, so I have to spend money to let an agency help me proceed the process. Today I also bought a pair of shorts.

Now I do feel that time lapses swiftly. I have spend about 362 days in Australia. I can still clearly remember the morning I arrived in Darwin, and the days I met friends from different countries. It will be a year that I will always remember.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

How Time Crawls Slowly

Due to that I do not have a lot of opportunity to use the internet, and also there's nothing much happening here, I rarely have a new post recently. The work is boring, repetitive and one of the cooks I have to work with all day is quite rude. All of those make the stay here a kind of endurance, but in a good way my patience is improved anyway.

These days the boredom of my life here drastically increases. The Korean girl worked with us had had left for many weeks, and the friendly Sydney girl had also gone back to Sydney to work at the Royal Easter Show and she'll not be back until next Thursday. I don't have many people to talk to. Most of the time I'm either working in the kitchen or stay in my room reading a novel. Sometimes I rent DVDs, but not often. Working days are long and tedious, but off days are boring nonetheless.

Now I count the days every day. Until today I have to stay in Horn Island for another 14 days, and I have to work for another 11 days. I really hope these days fly.

After here I will fly to Cairns on 13th of April, and immediately be picked up by an English woman whom I met at our hotel in January, and befriended. She lives in Innisfail which is about one hour of drive south to Cairns. I got her postcard earlier this week, and I called her then. She agreed to pick me up from Cairns airport. I'll stay with her until that Tuesday, and go back to Cairns for another 2 days to apply tax refund and deal with some other matters. I'll fly to Osaka, Japan, on 17th of April.

All in all I'll have stayed in Australia for 364 days, and I'll be away from home for more than 1 year. The past more than 11 months seemed to be long gone, they passed so quickly. I can still recall the scenes of the morning when I arrived in Darwin from Singapore on 19th April 2007. However, the current days of my working here still crawl slowly, very.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

8 Weeks to Go

There's really nothing special happening here, and that's why I havn't posted much lately.

The Chinese New Year was past, and it was the first time I wasn't at home during that time. To be honest, I felt lonely. The only people on this island knowing that holiday were just my Korean girl co-worker and me. There was nothing we could do to make that holiday special. All we got was working as usual. The only thing made me happy was that I called my family and several friends in Taiwan.

I will leave this island on the 13th of April, and that's 8 weeks from now. I can't wait the coming of the day. I'll be very happy to leave here.

In my original plan I was to stay in Australia for another 2 weeks since my working holiday visa expires on 19th of April, but things had changed. I found that it seemed to be difficult to extend my visa to a visitor/tourist's visa, and so I will leave Australia before my current visa expires. And my sister is going to get married on 2nd of May, I have decided to go back on time to participate her wedding ceremony.

Because now I'll have to go back to Taiwan before my sister's wedding, so that I will not go to Singapore to take a train to Malaysia and Thailand this time. Besides, as a Taiwanese passport holder, I have to apply for a tourist's visa to Malaysia and Thailand in Singapore in order to take the train ride, truely I think that's a pity. Maybe I'll do that in the future and get the visas ready in Taiwan.

This time I'll fly to Osaka, Japan, from Cairns. I'll stay a few days in Osaka, and then take a train to Kyoto. I want to spend more than one week in Kyoto before I return to Taiwan on 30th of April.

How do I hope the next 8 weeks pass in a blink, but I know that it is actually not a too long period of time. I can't wait to leave.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Life on a Remote Island

I have been working and living on this remote and small island for 3 weeks, and to be honest so far I think the life I lead here is not too bad.

My work here is as a kitchenhand, I have to wash loads of dishes, prepare food materials, and clean the kitchen, restaurant and toilets. Recently I have also learned to make lunch meals, so during lunch time I also have to make sandwiches and burgers. I start working in the morning at 11 o'clock, have a break from 2 or 3 PM, go back to work at 5 and finish at around 10. I work 5 or 6 days a week. The hotel provides us full-time workers accommodation and food. Everyweek I get paid about 500 dollars.

After work i simply go back to the house we live to watch TV or sleep. I don't go out usually because there are many mosquitoes and sandflies everywhere, and normally the weather is hot and it rains a lot. I don't spend much money either, on this island there are only two shops, and everything the sell is at least twice the price when compared to mainland Australia, that is truely terrible. So life is very simple here.

The best thing here is that people are mostly very friendly. The aboriginal, Torres Strait islanders, are exceptionally friendly. I have an aboriginal worker, Tina. She's a very nice person. She has a big family here in Torres Strait, and she has family members all around here. She had introduced me to some of her family members. Lase week when I had a day off, I went to ride dingy, small boat, with her, her brother Issac and 2 of my co-workers. The dingy belongs to ther brother, and her brother drove the dingy for us. When we started the weather was okay, we sailed to Thursday Island, made a circle around it, and then sailed to the sea among other islands. Then we planned to do some fishing, but after her brother dived into the sea twice, he then said it's not suitable for fishing that day. We then sailed to the back of Horn Island. We went to a shallow water there, I went into the water, it was warn and comfy, and there were lots of oysters growing on hte rocks under the water. Later the weather changed, it's now wet season and it generally rains everyday. We thought we had to go back, but the weather was so bad, it rained very heavy, and the wind was strong. Our little dingy seemed like nothing in the wild sea. The waves were high, and that made our ride very tough. We had to cling to the dingy very tightly, if not we surely would fall off it into the sea. The rain hit hard on our faces, and every time we fell off the tip of a wave our bottoms and backs hurt. It was lucky for us to return safely, I thought. The next day my whole body ached.

That's the simple life I'm living here. I think I can really stay until the 2nd week of April, and then start the next episode of my journey.