Long term away

It has been a while again. I can always be lazy about writing blog.

However the reason I have not been writing anything is not only the laziness but also the lack of topics.

Since I started to work in Melbourne, I could never come up with the sentences to write down. Recently my life is just a routine and I do same things everyday. No stimulation. Sometimes I try to think about something I want to share, but I always fail. What I can think about is nothing but working. There should be lots of things related to my experience from this job, however I do not want to write about working if possible. It will make me look like "business person". I do not desire to be looked like that.

I think I got bored with living in Melbourne. Probably I should explore this city more or just travel somewhere else I can be more excited. I used to be an active person, but I came to be one of the "business-type people" nowadays.

Keep writing blog is so difficult unless I am really keen to do. But the truth is I love writing. That's why I always restart to write even if I haven't been able to keep this.

I will write something at least once a week. This is my resolution from now on. If I keep doing blog, I can be active in order to always look for something interesting.

New work, new life

I finally will be able to move to new place which is located around 10 minutes far from Melbourne city centre by tram. I am gonna work there as a house manager of a relatively small hostel. Manager! I can't imagine how I will manage to deal with tasks in the hostel. I can't imagine I will take a big responsibility. Since this is my first experience, I don't know how to work as a manager. It will definitely be tough for me but at the same time it will be exciting and great step to start my new career. 

I have been waiting for one month to start to work. It was such a long time. I've never experienced this boring life. Even though I would feel tired and irritated when I was busy, working is much better than not working at all. No matter how busy I was, no matter how I felt exhausted, I had something to do at least and made money to live and enjoy. In this month, however, I was really nervous because of not working at all. I don't have enough money to spend on study or leisure. The life with nothing to do is totally meaningless. Totally invaluable. I spent a whole month on listening to English Podcast, reading books I've already read a few times and internet. A whole month! Can you believe this? It is so harsh that I was almost out of control. It was not good for mental health. If this kind of life kept one more month, I would get depression or something. And the reason I didn't write so many articles on this blog was that I didn't feel like to do so. Nothing to do means nothing to write.

Fortunately, though, I will start new life. I know nothing is harder than present situation. I must feel excited about that. It's time to change everything. I never want to be at as same situation as present.

Toyota's Decision

On 10th February, Toyota has made a "heart-breaking" decision that it will stop manufacturing in Australia by end of 2017. This afternoon I just happened to turn on TV, noticing the Japanese guy with familiar face was making an announcement. He was Akio Toyoda who is CEO of Toyota Motor Corporation. The program I was watching was ABC News and it spared most time of evening news on this sudden announcement. 

I, as one Japanese staying here in Melbourne, was sad to hear this news. Apparently we can find a number of Toyota cars here. There is no wonder because Toyota has the biggest market share in Australia. According to Key Automotive Statistics 2012 issued by Australian government, the percentage of market share by Toyota is 19.6%, followed by Holden (10.3%) and Ford (8.1%). To make matters worse, these Holden and Ford already stated that they will also finish their manufacturing in Australia as well as Toyota. Holden will close in 2017 and Ford will close in 2016. Unbelievably, totaled 38.0% manufacturing in Australia market share will end in 2017. How is the industry going to be? 
  
The car industry in Australia will definitely be obliged to change in three years. According to the comment from the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the decision could cost as many as 50,000 jobs and wipe $21 billion from the economy. The affect of Toyota's decision broke today must be huge. We have to keep an eye on what and how the government or the industry will deal with it to support workers who are supposed to lose their job. I hope they will make the industry and the economy better soon.

Awesome OmmWriter

In these days, I haven't uploading this blog so often. Not because I didn't have time to do it, but because I always hesitated to write an article. One reason is that it is difficult to find a topic to write about. For another reason, when I face to my laptop, I am often made to look at other softwares or windows because the laptop has lots of attractive things. I guess most of you have the experience that you can't focus on what you are doing right now because being attracted with other things on your personal computer. I am, of course, not an exception. However I finally found an excellent text editor called "OmmWriter". It  manages to make me focus on writing really well by creating a beautiful writing environment. This OmmWriter would change the frequency of uploading my blog hopefully. In this article, I am happy to introduce this brilliant text editor.

OmmWriter official website: http://www.ommwriter.com/

OmmWriter Homepage

At first, I was just wanted to find a text editor to make a draft of an article because it is inconvenient to write directly to my blog online. I sometimes failed to save the article and had to write it again from scratch. It was horrible mistake, resulted in total waste of time. To avoid this I really wanted some useful text editor. Unfortunately, pre-installed ones in the computer are not good enough to write an article. 

I found some free text editors. They must be useful, at least better than pre-installed ones. However, they didn't struck me so much probably because they are not for focusing on writing itself but for editing program languages such as C, C++, Java or HTML etc. 

Fortunately I finally found one great software for editing text. That is the "OmmWriter". Briefly speaking, it is not cutting-edge or high-tech software but is very simple. Simple enough to focus on typing. 

First of all, when you open the OmmWriter, a display comes up with FULL SCREEN so that you cannot be attracted with other windows you are opening or some other applications you can use just to click once. The only way you go through to see other things is to minimize or close the window. But you cannot see the buttons to minimize or close unless you move a mouth. Since it takes a little time to click these buttons, I am sure you rarely do that.

The display of OmmWriter - You can't see anything except for words you are writing unless you move a mouth.

Second of all, OmmWriter has background sounds and typing sounds you can choose from. The background sound makes you relaxed and the typing sound makes you eager to type more. Thanks to these sounds, I am sure you can focus on what you are doing, i.e. typing.

When you move a mouth, you can find some buttons to choose the sound or the colour etc.

Lastly, you can choose the colour of the background display. There are eight colours you can choose from and they are totally simple which means there are no textures, patterns or images at all. This also strongly affect your eyes relaxed and to focus more on typing itself.

You can choose different colour's background

As I wrote above, OmmWriter is very simple. This total simplicity affects the way you type. You cannot help but type without much thinking about other subjects. Indeed it is not free but very cheap. You can purchase this excellent software just in US$4.11 at least, it depends on how much you want to pay (you can decide how much you pay when you download). 

Needless to say, I wrote this article using OmmWriter. It is amazing. How could I expect I wrote the article so smoothly. The more I focus on writing an article, the better the quality of the article will be. I will definitely take advantage of OmmWriter to keep my blogs frequently.

If you are interested, Please check out the official website. This is worth purchasing if you really want decent text editor to be able to focus on typing whatever you want.

OmmWriter official website: http://www.ommwriter.com/

Greenhouse Backpacker

Greenhouse Backpacker is located in the city centre and is very closed to United Backpacker I mentioned before. Since I just wanted to see different backpacker and to stay cheaper, I decided to move to this backpacker. Indeed I stayed only for two nights because I had to move to another place due to my working condition. As I haven't started to work I can't wirte about the details. However I believe it would be a great experience for me.

In this article, anyway, I want to introduce the Greenhouse Backpacker a bit. This backpacker was really clean and tidy. I thought this was a professional work. Since this backpacker has a weekly rate, you can stay a little cheaper than United Backpacker.

What I preferred the most was a spacious and clean common room. This common room was comparatively quiet and it made me feel relaxed. Free Wi-Fi was also available there. Moreover I could enjoy the free breakfast which is available EVERYDAY. It was really nice because I didn't need to prepare my own meal in the morning and I could save money.

At first I paid for one week because they have a weekly rate. As I mentioned above, however, I had to move to another place, I checked out early. What this backpacker was great was that they refund all the amount I didn't stay, though of course they changed it to nightly rate. I didn't expect I could get my money back, I was really grateful.

United Backpacker and Greenhouse Backpacker have high rate in Melbourne. If you want to make friends and have fun with them or want more friendly services, I recommend United Backpacker. If you want to be relaxed and save money but still need high quality to some extent, I recommend Greenhouse Backpacker. Both these two backpackers are great. You won't regret whichever you would choose.

After all, however, you need to find a shere house, a flat, or an apartment if you plan to stay in Melbourne for a long time. As the living cost is extremely high here, room share is a popular option the most working holiday makers choose.

United Backpackers in Melbourne

I moved to Melbourne on 18th of January.

I have been staying at United Backpackers which is located in heart of the city. This backpackers is the newest and cleanest I have ever seen. Staff are friendly and helpful. All the rooms and floors are highly secured and even bathrooms have security doors! Kitchen is also clean though it is a bit small.

Surprisingly, I got a birthday present here! Even though I just arrived at this backpackers, I got an excellent customer service. On the second day in Melbourne was my birthday. When I woke up, I saw the notice on the door which said "Dear Kyohei, when you wake up and see this notice please come to the reception....." something like that. At first I thought I did something wrong.

What did I do? ... With some nervous feelings I went to the reception and show the notice paper to the staff. Then she checked my name and said "Happy Birthday!" bringing a yellow bottle with a message saying happy birthday in Japanese. I didn't expect such an excellent service at all. What a lovely backpacker this is!

Since there are no Japanese staff here, I guess someone write this message in Japanese using Google search. I really appreciated it. 

Only the problem is that the price is extremely expensive. However every backpackers is so much expensive anyway, I think I took a right choice. I might find much cheaper hostels here but it must be disgusting. I don't want to stay dirty and low quality hostels anymore. If I spend money on a good place I can feel good and it will lead me to be more active. Eventually I can be more satisfied.

Due to this cost problem, I can't stay here for a long time. I am looking for an apartment to live by myself. No matter how expensive it would be, I will take it if I can be satisfied. Living condition is a really important to me. 

The life on the boat - Murray River Queen -

Just for three and a half weeks, the life on the boat as the orange picker was done. Orange picking was extremely tough and it is not an over expression. In addition to that, the money I can get from this job was really poor. 

Income is decided according to how many bins you get. You may have to pick approximately 800 oranges to fill up a bin, though it depends on the size of oranges. You can get $22 per bin and you can normally fill up 2 or 3 bins each day.

If the job can be done easily, I might have kept working more. Unfortunately, however, it was really tough. 

First of all, I couldn't work for a long time due to the serious heat wave. The strong sunshine burnt my skins and it was hot enough that I had to take a break under shade many times. 

Second of all, I got wound on my arms and legs because I had to put my arms inside the branches or to climb the trees to pick oranges there.

Finally, how many bins I could fill up depended on farms. I sometimes could pick lots of big oranges in a tree, but I sometimes had to clean up trees with very small ones. When I did cleaning up work, I could fill up just a bin per day even though I worked for more than 5 hours!

From the reason I mentioned above, I decided to change the situation which let me go to Melbourne. To be honest, I didn't expect to go to Melbourne or Sydney because they are too big cities to live and it would be so expensive. However, according to the living in Adelaide and Waikerie, I realized I can't find a job there. I was really pathetic when I was in there because I was the only one who can't speak English fluently. 

Especially on the boat in Waikerie, the workers are full of the people from the UK who are, needless to say, native English speakers. I met Canadian, Irish, Dutch, Belgium and French. Some people's English was not perfect, but apparently I was the only one whose English was really poor. There were no Asian.

This was actually the situation I craved for. I wanted to be surrounded by lots of native English speakers, and at the same time, they are foreigners. This place must have been the ideal place to stay to improve my poor English. But unfortunately, I was kind of overwhelmed. I really felt silly and pathetic. I couldn't make an enough conversation with anyone. It was too hard to keep making an effort. 

Since I don't want to run away, I will never give up. I will go to Melbourne to get over this problem. I believe I can be a part of the people who I met on the boat when I finish the working holiday in Australia.

By the way, it was 45 degree on this Friday... It was extraordinarily hot. I hope the heat wave will disappear soon.