Mascots are Funny

Not too long ago, I was up on the hill snowboarding and took this picture of an interview:

They were interviewing a ski instructor on proper skiing techniques. Make note of the big critter in the back, a big possum mascot for a major Australian TV network.

I sat and watched with amusement. The crew started to make their way down the hill and sensing something might happen, I started to film.

I was happily rewarded:

I Don't Want to Let You Down

This week is crazy. Working at a switch factory (just for this week) eight hours during the day and doing cleaning at a butcher shop for two hours in the evenings. I finally understand why my mom wanted me to get an education...so I wouldn't have to do these kinds of jobs.

At the factory we assemble parts for switches and other electronic items. The job is purely repetitive motion and is the epitome of boredom. As one female co-worker put it "I get eight hours to think about life." However, let's make it clear, I'm not complaining. I'm happy with any work that I get, because this is survival. I've also had the opportunity to notice some things.

There's a lot of Vietnamese mothers at the switch factory and they remind me of my friends' moms. Just like them, my friends' mothers (and my mom as well) immigrated to a new country to find better opportunities. They're doing this kind of menial work so that their kids don't have to. They want their children to go to college, graduate, and find better jobs (sound familiar?).

To their surprise they find someone like their son, raised in a Western country* and speaks English as a first language, working under them.

A common question I get when they hear I'm from America is "What (the hell) are you doing here?"

I wonder myself (sometimes). At least I get to experience first hand the type of labor my mom and my friends' moms do and I know where they're coming from.

I can't help but feel gratitude and also a sense of shame when I realize how much my mom sacrificed. And I understand why a lot of my peers do what they do, studying hard in college and/or pursuing stable careers.

Her sacrifice gives me greater inspiration to study, to create, and (on the pragmatic side) to invest my money wisely.

I always keep in mind that this work is just a step to where I want to go.

I don't want to let you down.



*Here I take "Western" as being developed English speaking countries, in this case USA and Australia.

Notes from the Mango Farm 10 of 10

Or more accurately, Photos from Leaving the Mango Farm

Notes from the Mango Farm 9 of 10

This is the last note from my journal on the mango farm. The next post will just be photos. Hopefully I was able to successfully share with you what life on the farm was like and also give some different perspectives.

Wednesday, 10/21

Day 12

Today's the last day of the mango season, which is fine by me because my arm is freaking itchy as hell.

I like this lifestyle, it's simple, it's pure. It's a microcosm of society, except in this society, everyone's pretty cool.

But I long for the city, for internet, for fast food.

I've learned so much here, from this place I've gained confidence in being able to take care of myself and also Trish.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to the city! I'll reunite with my partner (that's the term they use here for boyfriend/girlfriend) and start making plans for the trip to Alice Springs.

Excited.

Notes from the Mango Farm 8 of 10

Tuesday, 10/20

Day 11

On the farm, you have to think about every movement: "I'm going to take a shower, I should drop off my dirty clothes in the wash on the way, also I still gotta make tomorrow's lunch, etc..." As I mentioned before, time is precious, and using time wisely helps to save some time to relax.

Here I've improved my Mandarin a lot, today I've learned a new idiom, 強龍不壓坻頭蛇 (Qiang2Long2Bu4Ya1Di4Tou2She2) from Chris, a Taiwanese guy that's been traveling Oz with his cousin. It literally means, "A strong dragon doesn't step on the local snake."

Chris was in Perth (in Western Australia, birthplace of the late Heath Ledger RIP) before coming to Darwin and he was working at a bar there. At the bar, some drunk guy said to him: "You fucking asian!" Chris just smiled and ignored him and went along his business. To Chris, he knows he's a cool guy, but here in a foreign country, he believes that it's not his place to insult the locals even if they insult him first. Chris said, "Anyways the guy was drunk, so it's probably better just to ignore him."

I'm not sure if I could've done the same. As one of my friends would say, "My pride won't let me do that."

I think it would be cooler if I got some back up and...

Notes from the Mango Farm 7 of 10

Hey guys, I've been really slacking on finishing up this "Notes from the Mango Farm" series. This past week, Trish and I have been really busy looking for a new place to live close to Adelaide city. We're finally moving into our new place today! I'm so happy, living in a hostel sucks, even on the farm, I had my own room (albeit in a old school trailer). I'm going to finish this series up soon and put up some photos of some of the travels that happened after. More soon...

Monday, 10/19

Day 10

Today, while I was snapping stems, I had this feeling of Deja Vu. Here I am in a foreign country doing farm work and it feels as if I've done this before, it feels like an echo of an old dream. In the dream, I remember that I'm sitting in a similar position, doing some form of labor, and I'm thinking about money, which is exactly what I was doing at that moment. I've heard before that deja vu is a way that life tells you that you're on the right track.

I also have an old dream that still haunts me. I had this dream in high school where a gang of guys, in a city I've never been to, beat the shit out of me. The details are fuzzy but I remember that the place is foreign. I thought that it might happen to me in college or Taiwan, but it didn't. Thought came back to me today and I decided to do some martial arts training after work.

Water shared a story about how this guy on a bus in town kept throwing trash at him. He asked us at the dinner table what we would do if it happened to us. Ignore him, ask him to stop, move away ...Water did all those things but the guy kept throwing trash at him (Water couldn't move that far away, the bus was full).

I felt angered by the story because the guy was picking on Water probably cause Water was Asian. There's similar stories of Asians getting picked on in Australia that I've heard and I myself experienced such an incident (I will share at a later post). I wanted to say, "Kick his fucking head in!" but then I thought about it. The first person to get angry is the first person that loses. Once you lose your head, someone's going to get hurt. It sucks, but we're the foreigners here so if shit goes down, we'll take the heat.

Water said that he just turned towards the guy on the bus and said very loudly and clearly "Gan ni niang!" (Fuck your mother!) The guy said, "I don't speak Chinese."

Water, "I said you were very handsome."

I thought that was funny, but that's not going to keep that fucking bloke from doing more disrespectful shit towards people.

The mango season is coming to an end soon. I keep asking the big boss' wife, Ruth, but she's still unsure of when they'll finish ("It all depends on how much fruit there is"). We'll see.

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.

Notes from the Mango Farm 1 of 10

I will be putting up 10 posts in the upcoming days from my time on the mango farm. I spent 12 days working on the farm (which is nothing compared to some of the other guys there who've been there for 3 months).

10/10, Day 1 on the Mango Farm

[note: my girlfriend goes by either Apo or Trish]

The first week in Darwin has been really fun, but anxious as well. I spent the last week hanging out with the girlfriend, making new friends, and looking for work. I spent three days at the Kakadu National Park where I got to swim in a lagoon hidden in the forest, that was awesome.

However, anxiety kept increasing as money kept leaving my hand and the prospect of not having a job was getting to me.

I spent the past few days with Trish going to employment agencies around Darwin and calling various businesses for a position. I was on the last end of my finances when I got I call this morning.

"Did you call about the Mango Farm?"

Yes, I did. Trish and I applied for a mango farm job last week, through a friend's recommendation.

"Can you be ready by 11a?"

I was still in shock, but I said yes. Mind you, he called at 8:38am, so I had little over 2 hours to get home (I was out looking for work at fisherman's wharf at the time, but got lost), notify Apo, and pack all my belongings.

When I finally got here, it was like a little Taiwan. 15 out of the 20 workers there were Taiwanese, the other five comprised of three guys from Hong Kong and a couple from Japan. I never thought I could go to Australia and have a better chance to practice Mandarin more than I ever did in America.

The owners and the bosses of the farm are Dave and Ruth: Dave is an elderly Australian guy with a no bullshit attitude and I didn't get to meet Ruth, but the other workers say she's well traveled, friendly, and Canadian. There I also got to meet Peter the senior mango/watermelon picker (they also grow watermelons on the farm), a Taiwanese guy that purposefully speaks to me in ancient Chinese idioms to confuse/educate me.

Today was everyone's day off so Apo and I just cleaned up our room and got settled in. We sat around and go to know everyone.

At night it was so beautiful. I've never seen a night sky so wide and open. And the stars, the STARS! It's as if I can finally see them, they're so many of them and so clear.

Mango Farm

Living Quarters (ext)

Living Quarters (int)