Holidays at Sunshine Coast

We are super excited about holidays in sunshine coast. We have booked flights and did some preparations for IELTS exam and booked a cheapish accommodation for 3 of us.

After 3 long years, we took cab ride to domestic airport and checked ourselves in and soon we boarded the flight to Sunshine Coast. All 3 of us were so happy and excited, as flight took off and service commenced first thing we asked for was beer. We had couple of beers on flight and just enjoyed the journey.

As we arrived on airport of sunshine coast, we realised it’s a small town of Queensland and life is very quiet as compared to Sydney. We got off the plane and had to take small walk towards the baggage claim area. We took our baggage and walked out. None of us could drive and didn’t have local driving license. We started looking for public transport to hotel and choose to go cheaper way of bus instead of a taxi.

On our way to hotel, we were enjoying the views totally different from Sydney, weather was certainly warmer and place lot quieter. There were not as many cars on the road as we were used to see in Sydney. Public transport was also cheaper than Sydney. Soon we arrived at our hotel, which was in a walking distance to beach.

After checking into the hotel, we just relaxed and had some beers. Fortunately there was Domino’s pizza across the road and they had deal of $5 pizza on that night, we had pizzas for dinner. Next day morning we had to leave for our exam at another University. After reaching this place, we realised the University was around half an hour drive from hotel and bus services to university run every hour, it’s not as frequent as we expected.

Next day morning, we woke up early and took an early morning bus to get to the University in time. Bus arrived on schedule and we reached on time. University had a massive campus as opposed to campuses that we had seen in Sydney. As we got off the bus at University, it took us almost 15 minutes to get to the building where we had our exam scheduled.

IELTS exams setup was listening, reading and writing session in first half of the day and second half was for speaking. We finished first half and it went well and then waited for our turns in speaking session. Soon we finished this exam and hope to get more than 7.5 bands to secure more points in permanent residency application. We would get results in 2-3 weeks.

With this exam, our main target to come to this place was finished. We were free to enjoy the holidays. We returned back to hotel, had some food and beers, went to beach and had loads of fun.

As the day was about to end, we received a phone call from our friend in Sydney and the news he gave us sent nervous butterflies in our stomachs for rest of the evening…

Job Number 9

In January 2007, as my exams were over, I didn’t have much to do apart from working. I was carrying on with my work routine with the job at supermarket and the volunteer position at university.

By now, it was part of my routine to keep hunting for better opportunities and as soon as I found one, I would quickly make my move. It was the same case in January when one of my contacts with whom I had worked few months back called me as he was opening up a small retail store.

I had set up a time with him to discuss what he wanted me to do and what was on offer. As I had been working in retail and other sectors for nearly three years, this person firstly wanted me to setup his retail store from scratch and when it’s up and running he wanted me to manage. For obvious reasons, this person offered me this opportunity as I was still on student visa, still vulnerable for job prospects and still is cheaper option for him to pay me. The offer was certainly better than what I was getting at supermarket and kind of senior role in managing other staff too. As the guy offering this role was Indian and give me previous experience in working with Indians, I accepted his offer but didn’t quit my supermarket job. I thought about giving it a try and see how it works out in near future.  With this it was job number 9 in my career ladder.

In few weeks store was set up and running, staff were rostered and I was supposed to attend only morning shifts. As business grew, owner wanted me to be there at-least 12 hours of the day and my pay would still be the same. As I was still better off with this money, I continued with this request on for few weeks.

Gradually there were different requests of working night shifts, early mornings and extended hours and I started realising that he is trying to rip me off. It didn’t stop here; he started holding my pay for up to 2-3 weeks giving various reasons of business. Since I had previous bad experiences of not being paid for several months, I decided to act on this quickly.

My holidays and IELTS exams were approaching soon too. I didn’t want too many headaches anymore and this was going on over few weeks.

I spoke to this owner to meet me at shop for banking cash that we used to keep in safe. At this point, I told him to pay me the arrears as there was cash readily available. Fortunately he did and cleared all my dues straightaway. As soon as I had money in my hands, I quickly finished my work, went home and called it quits. I called up the owner and told him I am not working for him anymore.

Luckily, I still had supermarket job in my hands and went back to my normal routine.