Notes from the Mango Farm 6 of 10

Hello All!

I will continue with the "Notes from the Mango Farm" but first a quick update:

I'm currently living in Adelaide, South Australia. Earlier this week, Trish and I found a job on a, guess what, a strawberry farm! Holy crap, it's so much harder than the mango farm, but the pay has the potential to be higher (they pay per kilo of strawberries, will give the details of farm pay in another post).

All right, more Mango stories:

Day 9, 10/18

Sunday

Work is now boring if anything. It's not very strenuous and we take a lot of breaks. On one such break I talked with Rick about my plans of going to New York and being an actor. What's great about meeting new people is the surprise of finding another person with an artistic outlet. He perked up and shared with me that he writes poetry and even performed a poem of his that he memorized (a very intricate piece about the choices we make in life and how it leads up to where we are now).

I thought to myself, "This guy's an interesting fella." The thing is, you would never guess by the way he looks that he writes poetry or is as intelligent as he is (He looks like a regular bloke, he said so himself [Sorry Rick, your secret is out]).

Later that night, after Rick left for home and all the workers had dinner, we were all bored and we started arm wrestling (in Mandarin: 比腕力 bi3wan3li4). The way they arm wrestle in Taiwan is that you put your wrist across the other guy's and from that position try to bring the other guy's arm down.

I beat two guys, one with each arm. It wasn't really skill, the first guy (with my right arm) gave me some trouble, but once I got him to extend his arm out from him, there was no way he could win. The second guy, a guy from Hong Kong, I just caught him off guard and I beat him to the punch. Thanks to Daniel from back home for teaching me the tricks ;)

Now that I beat those guys though, I'm afraid they might think my head's too big. I'm going to keep a low profile tomorrow.

And for no reason at all, I'll leave you with a picture of our bathroom/shower. Fancy!

Notes from the Mango Farm 5 of 10

Friday & Saturday, 10/16-10/17

Days 7 & 8

Taka, Sae (Taka's girlfriend), and my girlfriend left this morning for the city. Taka and Sae already had made plans to leave the farm and Apo was called back to the city because of a previous job.

Whenever anyone leaves, it's an excuse for Asians to do one thing...PHOTO SHOOT! Below are pictures from last night's dinner.

Today (Saturday) is the one day a week we get off, so after Apo left, I did what was natural and became a super otaku, staying in and organizing videos that I had filmed with my new camera (thanks Feng!). Quietly sitting in your own room and organizing your own videos is a rather serene, comfortable feeling.

Notes from the Mango Farm 4 of 10

Thursday, 10/15

Day 6

Today was actually fairly relaxing, I'm pretty much used to the work now and Taka and I got to work with another team this afternoon that work at a slower pace. Taka and I made sure that we were extra careful with the fruit and picking conservatively. This was because of what happened this morning:

Taka, I, and a Taiwanese guy named Water (he chose that name because a character in his name has three water characters in it) went to a section set apart from the main mango field. We were doing what we usually do, picking near-ripe mangoes from the tree (it takes five days for the fruit to hit the market, so you can't just pick "ripe" fruit) and placing them in crates when Dave came roaring up in his old Toyota SUV. Taka had the misfortune to be closest to Dave as Dave stepped out of the car.

Dave took one look at the crate Taka was filling and saw that some of the mangoes had sap oozing from them. About mango sap: mango sap oozes from the area where the stem meets the top of the mango. If that's snapped, sap oozes from that area and trickles down the fruit and on to others in the same crate which is very bad. The sap is some gnarly stuff, if it gets on your skin and you don't neutralize it with some base, your skin's going to come right off. For mangoes, you ever see areas of black crap on the skin of mangoes? That's from the sap.

Anyways, Dave gave a Taka a big talking to: "I told you a thousand times! You have to be gentle with the mangoes If you snap the stem you're going to burn the fruit! Also what is this crap that you're picking, these aren't even ripe yet..."

He then told Taka to leave the farm. Taka stood there for a moment, trying to process what was being said to him and then started to take out the unripe/sap damaged fruit. Dave was pissed, "What are you doing? Leave it! GO!"

I stood there, watching the incident like a car crash, unsure of what I was supposed to do. I was new to the farm and wasn't sure if it was my place to step in, but looking back that's an excuse. I just stood there, afraid of being yelled at too, not saying shit.

Water, however, went over and said to Dave, "Just give him a warning, you warned me before, remember? It's ok we will tell him [about the mangoes]."

Water and I stepped in close to Taka and Dave had a look at us three then said, "Ok. This is all your guys fault too your supposed to know better. I spend twelve months growing the fruit and you guys take five minutes to ruin it."

Dave went back to his car, slammed the door, and roared off.

Water turned to Taka, "You ok?"

Taka, "Ok, ok."

Water, "Don't worry. He talk to me like this before. He's like this. He's actually ok guy."

Taka, "Ok."

Me, "He's probably feeling more pressure now, maybe that's why he's more hot tempered."

Taka nodded and smiled, "No problem," and then went back to work.

I talked to Taka later in the day and he was feeling better. He even showed me a simple Judo throw (he's a black belt in Judo).

I said, "If Day-bee (are nickname for Dave) gives you a hard time you can use that one."

We laughed and moved on.

Notes from the Mango Farm 3 of 10

Monday-Wednesday 10/12-14

Days 3-5 On the Mango Farm

My body is getting used to the work. I've found ways to make the work easier and not waste so much energy. Time is so precious here, time just spent on work, taking care of lunch and dinner for tomorrow, taking a shower, washing clothes, you're only left with about 2 hours of free time after taking care of essentials.

Today (10/14) was a short day (0700-1430), and Apo and I had time to relax and watch Daria. I have all the seasons of Daria and we've been watching that pretty consistently. It's a pretty entertaining series especially if you're living on a farm (and I'm not being sarcastic).

Yesterday we did 15.5 bins of mangoes (approx 500 kilograms a bin). Its hard stuff. Rick is really cool, he's taken me on as his student, teaching me little bits here and there (taught me how to use a watch as a compass by pointing the hour hand to the sun and taking the center line betw the 12 o'clock place and the hour hand as north [north in the southern hemisphere, south in the northern hemisphere], nifty shit).

Time for bed, i'm late as it is.

Pictures!

Wall Geckos

Frog from Chrono Trigger

Sunrise or Sunset?

Notes from the Mango Farm 2 of 10

Sunday 10/11

Day 2 Mango Farm

I'm so tired. Today we spent 10 hours snapping stems, picking mangoes, pushing mangoes, eating mangoes (when the boss isn't looking). I worked with a team of 7 guys with a mango truck: 1 Australian, Rick (the manager, very casual, well traveled, humourous guy), 1 Japanese guy, Taka (very quiet, but efficient and has a sense of humor) and 4 Taiwanese guys: Peter (the senior mango picker), Tequila (former computer engineer), Ben (more quiet than Taka), Felix (former Math student from Taoyuan) and me, the only Yank.

Rick seems happy to have someone to talk to and shoot the bull with (the other guys speak English as a 2nd language and don't get the dirty jokes). He's a really knowledgeable guy and is teaching me a lot about the way the mango farm works as well as a lot about Australia.

Anyways, I got to wake up at 6am, so off to bed!

The Crew

From Left to Right (foreground): Rick, Peter, Ben, Taka

From Left to Right (background): Felix, Tequila

The Mango Machine

Crew+Machine

Apo Packing Mangoes

Me after a long day of work.