"Moving On"
Mar. 19th, 2013 06:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aggienaut
My visa runs out here on August 24th. People from many other countries can easily get a second one, provided they spend at least 88 days slaving away in the agricultural sector, which is the only reason most backpackers ever have any reason to come out here to Bundaberg. They're packed into dismal hostels (some with inspiring names like "Cellblock"), and carted off every morning at 04:30 to spend the day picking vegetables. From what I hear, the supervisors are none to nice, frequently firing people on a whim, sometimes because they god forbid are drinking too much water. By the end of the day they're covered from head to foot in mud, and the only recourse, apparently, is to then drown one's sorrows in "goon" (box wine, which I think is particularly bad here?).
Fortunately I don't have to do that, since I work in the agricultural sector ... I have no excuse but I'm in the Bundaberg area voluntarily. And it wouldn't do me any good anyway, since Australia apparently hates Americans, we aren't eligible for second year working holiday visas.
Okay I think it's all just reciprocal, and we don't get them because the US doesn't grant them. I don't think we even grant one year working holiday visas?
Don't get me wrong, there's some very nice locals here. I always enjoy talking to the kid that runs the food kiosk, Andrew at the hardware, or Sean at what I like to call the "prawn shop" (real name, the dreadfully dull "Moore Park Rocks." I like to get prawns there). And I cherish my conversations with the workplace health and safety inspector. BUT, even the locals admit that there's a lot of bogans out here. You might call them rednecks in the states. People missing teeth, with tattoos on their face, long ratty hair that doesn't look like its been washed in a month ... and somehow it seems a lot of the supervisors the backpackers work for fit into this category.
My visa only allows me to work for one place for 6 months, so I'd get termed out here at the beginning of May -- June if you subtract the month of April which I'll be spending in Africa.
My boss has mentioned that he'd sponsor me, and then I could stay on here much longer. He also mentioned they probably don't check up on the six month thing. Both of these comments were presumably peppered with colourful vulgar analogies to body parts, knowing him.
This job certainly has its pluses -- it pays well, I make my own hours, and generally no one's telling me what to do; but I'm also wondering if its time to move on.
I informed the boss that I was going to be going to Africa for a month. I wasn't sure how he'd take it, but he seemed more interested at the time in interrogating me as to whether I was, as he suspected, neglecting to spray an insecticide that's harmful to bees into hives to fight a problem they don't have. His suspicions are well founded, but don't tell him that.
In 11 days I have a flight from Bundaberg to Abuja, Nigeria. In 5 days I have a flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles, California. Presumably I need to change that one. But to when? When will I be wanting to go that way?
I applied for a job in the states. I'm sure I've been jinxing it up and down by mentioning it a lot. I'm excited about it. I've been putting off changing the flight to the States until I knew when they were doing in-person interviews for it in California. I found out this morning it's "the first two weeks of May" -- which oh so fortunately does not conflict with my projects in Africa. Presumably some time this week the phone interview will happen and I'll find out if they're even interested at all in meeting with me, but I don't have time to further delay changing the flight. Deadlines are coming together here like the climax of a movie. Do I hold out another day and maybe save myself several hundred dollars in changing flights around, do I book it for early May not knowing if I'll have any reason to travel at that point (and if not, will needlessly have to change it again somewhere in the mix of this tight schedule and running around Africa).
And on top of all that, this week I'm running around putting down (ie euthanizing) dozens of beehives that have the incurable disease of foulbrood. It's a disgusting disease that turns pupae into a brown gooey booger-like substance and makes a whole hive smell like a garbage can. And its so contagious that I have to treat every bit of equipment that touches an infected hive as if it too is infected, and have to make sure healthy bees never get a chance to "rob out" an infected one I've killed off. I haven't been this stressed since college.
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Date: 2013-03-19 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-19 09:32 am (UTC)But yeah I got an email from them AND an email from one of the people I used as a reference sayign they had called them (:
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Date: 2013-03-19 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-03-20 01:13 am (UTC)This is a good thing, they're investing time in you. And after you've told them about Africa, right?
As for the rest of it, I'm so confused. I hope you've changed the LA flight, I would imagine to when you'll be done in Africa and, I would imagine, to bring you back to the states for, hopefully, a an interview in early May. Am I getting this correct?
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Date: 2013-03-20 06:10 am (UTC)Another option that occurred to me is that it might be cheaper to fly from Egypt to the States than from here, if for some reason I cant' change my flight (or the change fees turn out huge).
But as it currently stands I am to return from Africa and --if they invite me to-- head to the states for the interview within two weeks. That doesn't give me terribly much time to so all the things I've been putting off doing here, like seeing Melbourne (much less the west coast) or even scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef which I could do from right here.
Also, because that's not complicated enough I'm tempted to see if I can fit a "side trip" to Bali between Africa and the states, because a good friend of mine will be there at exactly that time (the first two weeks of May).
Yeah, I remember corresponding with you about this but I forget at what stage of the communication process it was. I told them about the Africa projects in the most general terms (ie, I have two projects...), and they said, well they said
"Thank you for contacting me. We are calling references this week and as for the in-person interviews, we still envision those taking place sometime during the first 2 weeks of May. We have not set a firm date for those and I hope that is not too vague for your projects. If you let us know when the projects will be scheduled, we can try to work around them should we ask you to attend.
Thank you for asking and thank you for your interest!"
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Date: 2013-03-19 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-03-20 01:08 am (UTC)Well, yes. I think he's missing the first part of that equation, somehow! Let us not spray the hives with things harmful to bees, please!
I'm sorry your time in Australia is coming to an end, though it sure seems as if you've made the most if it while you were there! I hope this all settles out soon, so you're not so stressed. "Up in the air future" is one of the most stressful things of all. :(
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Date: 2013-03-20 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-20 04:34 pm (UTC)Assuming they didn't kill the bees already. :(
Why not try oil of thyme instead? It's supposed to kill off bee mites, without harming the bees... IF they were afflicted with whatever he's worried about in the first place. :O
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Date: 2013-03-21 07:30 am (UTC)Another simple thing that works for mites is powdered sugar! Sprinkling it into the hive, it doesn't effect hte bees, but the mites choke on it. Yay organic and non-poisonous!
Fortunately we do not have mites here ... yet. What we do have though is hive beetles.
Yesterday while I was putting hives down that had foulbrood, by sloshing a bit of gasoline into hives and letting the fumes kill them, I noted that it doesn't seem to effect the hive beetles, unfortunately.
One kind of crazy idea I think would be interesting is that the Australian native bees, Trigona carbonaria can "mummify" hive beetles with resin quite easily, and the hive beetles usually go to the top or the bottom of a hive, so what if one were to attache a T carbonaria hive directly below or above a beehive???
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Date: 2013-03-21 07:44 pm (UTC)Re: the hive beetles (ick), might there be any danger if the Australian bees crossbreed with the other bees? I'm thinking of that African killer bee scare a few decades back. ;)
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Date: 2013-03-21 08:50 pm (UTC)Nah they couldn't possibly crossbreed, honeybees are like ten times bigger, and they're not even in the same genus. The European / African crossbreed was between two types of bee that were the same species -- Apis mellifera ligustica (and other Europeans ssps) and Apis mellifera scutellata.
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Date: 2013-03-21 02:28 am (UTC)Foulbrood sounds like it was aptly named. Is that one of the problems with the overall decline of honeybees that I keep hearing about?
Edit to fix typos, because I couldn't proofread 30 words the first time.
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Date: 2013-03-21 07:23 am (UTC)As to part of the overall problem hmmm that's hard to say, since it's kind of unclear what the problem actually is. One theory I've heard that sounds relatively plausible is that some unknown virus is attacking the bees' immune system, thus leading them to fall pray to all kinds of other things.
But to be clear, there is absolutely not any "overall decline of honeybees." There's diseases and syndromes that cause temporary losses, but the population stays on a whole at equilibrium. Last I heard there were more managed hives in operation than before all this "bee decline" shenanigans.
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Date: 2013-03-21 04:29 am (UTC)As for the move, transitions are the most exciting and most frustrating times. I hope you find a new opportunity that you enjoy and that pays you well, wherever it might be. :)
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Date: 2013-03-21 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-03-21 06:45 am (UTC)Hoping for the best for you, and looking forward to hearing all about it.
Best of luck.
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