A job and a didj

I have been here for three weeks. I am working now - I scored a job with the NSW WorkCover people working in their Oxford Street site. I'll be working with another guy supporting 200 users! Oh bloody hell - no one told me that in the interview! So most of last week, I was looking for work. That may not sound much like fun, but when I think about why - well, it makes a bit of sense.

One the first day I arrived, Dan Garner and I wandered around Sydney, site seeing. I wanted to see some didjeridus so he took me to the circular quay and a piss-poor little shop. The didjeridus were not great either. The shop owner told me about the Didj-beat shop in the Rocks (a lovely bit of Sydney) so a few days later I went and had a look.

It was Aladin's cave. Didjeridus of many shapes and colours. Of course a lot of them were tourist didjeridus but a good 50% were the real deal, and had that sound that only comes from hardwood. Mel (the owner) is a bit knowledgable about the whole thing. She knows about the colours and what they mean, the crosshatching (rarrk) and dot work. Red means blood, black means people, yellow means sun and white means bone.
She knows a lot about pitch and is a very good western-style player.

So I visited and tried out 'the toys' as she calls them. I met one of her people (Takk - who plays bloody well) and swapped playing skills. She put me in touch with Peter Lister and Jeremy Cloake (who I had a lesson off a few days after that).

I played a lot of those didjeridus and each time I went back afterwards there was one stick that I wanted to play again and again!

So yesterday I bought it.

It is over a metre long and has yellow, red and black bands on it. The mouthpiece is less than 3cm. It is a yirdaki (not a didjeridu and not a mago) so it toots easily. I now have the stick that I am going to learn traditional playing on. I wish (a little not a lot) that I was back in the UK so that I could learn traditional playing off Shozo. But for now, I am going to try and learn the soft-style of playing that he showed me a few months ago, on a piece of plastic pipe :)

I went to the didg-beat shop with Bertrand, the french bloke from the hostel. He is pretty sound - a bit tiring because of the langauge barrier but thats okay. After I bought my new toy, he and I went on a boat round the harbour. Of course, my camera was in the hostel! But Bertrand will give me copies of some of the pictures I think.

Most of the people in the hostel are okay - of course there is the odd pratt, but in the main they are backpackers out having fun. The mix is great - lots of different people from lots of different countries. What amuses me is that 99.99999999% are from Europe! There is the odd kiwi kicking about (chups!). We have had koreans, chinese, japanese (dirty knees, what are these?), norwegians, dutch, germans by the million and a few brit-folk.

It is like fresher's week at uni most of the time. During the day, people are out wandering about and in the evening, we all sit around and drink Tooeeys (that is not how you spell it but I can't remember) or cheap red wine (which is often better than the stuff from the UK).

NB - do not go and see MI-3. It is tripe from start to finish.
I saw it on Thursday night with friends from Wake-up. It was Rrr-ubbish! Tom Cruise should get his head out of his scientologist's bum, and do a good film.
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Books - "Popcorn" and "This other edan" both by Ben Elton.
"Veronika decides to die" by Paulo Coelho.
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