Trials & Tribulations

Contrary to popular belief, It's not all fun and games all the time in the Life of "baldo." I have to work seasonally to support my lifestyle of travel and exploration of waves in Indonesia. A lot has changed since my last blog, and let this serve to update the long gap and also to act as revival to what I wanted to be a regular posting. Since I last left you, I spent several more month in Indonesia and returned to Australia at the end of the season in November and worked at small cafe on the beach in Sydney. All was going well till I got a phone call from a friend in Northern New South Wales who offered me a job working on a prawn trawler. Upon this news I dropped everything and went to Indonesia for a quick 6 week holiday from the cafe job to get prepared for the craziest work of my life. I flew back to Sydney on March 13th and directly to Cairns to take a safety course on commerical fishing boats and to begin preparations for the boat. It was a 85 foot prawn trawler and I was to be on board and at sea for 90 days of the hardest work a person could even begin to imagine. From the second the stepped foot on the boat to the second I stepped off was a living nightmare. Up a 4 AM and off to "sleep" at 1-2 AM depending on the night. And "sleep" wasnt really sleep when you consider the movement of the boat, the crashing of the anchor into the hull of the boat where my head was closely positioned. Usually sheer exhaustion prevented me from actually getting to sleep as the body needs to lay still for quite some time till it is ready to enter the realm of sleep, and by the this happened, it was already time to wake up and get back to work. Since I was the new guy, I had to do all of the shit jobs and was the designated "freezer bitch." This meant that ever time prawn had to be packed in the snap freezer, it was my job to suit up and catch the 1/2 to 1 TON of prawn and load it one 5 kilo box at a time into the freezer. I could go on and on for hours about the gritty details of the job, and maybe at some stage I will, but for now, It can be said this job was insanely hard and tested my sanity at many stages of the 90 days at sea. One I got off the boat, I flew back to Bali the following day and found out that I could no longer surf. Three months out of the water using all sorts of new muscles on the boat surely didnt imporve my surfing. I felt as is I was re-learning to surf all over again. I went back to my spot out in sumbawa and after 2-3 weeks I got back into the groove and found I was able to still get barreled. Following this warm up session, I met up with a few friends and went to Sumatra to delve into the remote waves in the Mentawai island chain. We stayed on land for 4 weeks with no phone service, no internet, and basically no power minus a few hours right at dark to allow for dinner and a little R&R before bedtime. Again another test in sanity took place out there. The waves were unbelieveable, but the food was very bland and not very abundant. We were nearly starving for 3 weeks out of the 4 we were there, eating nothing but rice, eggs, and boiled veggies. But looking back on that sanity test, I would take it any day over the sanity test I had on the fishing boat. After the stint in Sumatra, I went back to Sumbawa to have one last stint before the end of the season and my friend Tony and I ended our trip out there. Tony left first and I left a few days after he did when I called my old boss from the cafe in Sydney and found out that I was needed. I flew from Bali back to Sydney 3 days later and got straight back into the work. I work at the cafe now, every day, about 10 hours a day. I just ended a grueling 10 hour shift now, on a 85 degree humid saturday. Though the work is hard and the boss is annoying, it is NOTHING compared to the work I undertook on the fishing boat, and this I have to remind myself periodocially. The funny thing is that the PAY is actually much better at the cafe! I work half the hours per day, and I am on LAND! I get to surf when there are waves (which isnt often) and I get to sleep at least 8 hours + per night. Its a no brainer. I will never work on the fishing boat again, but I must say it was a life long experience I will never forget, it definately builds character if you can withstand it. After the boat, ALL work, no matter what it is, seems trivial. It all just has to be put into perspective, as does most things in life. If you just put your head down and grit your teeth, you can get through almost anything. Its truely amazing what the human body is capabale of...IF the mind can cope. My current situation is very extreme but in a much different sort of way, as will be explained in further detail in my next blog...