More Woofing and Job Hunting

On the other hand, I got a call from a lady that operated “Two Souls Bistro.” She had called me two hours previous to getting the other job and asked if could “work that night at 6 PM?” l said yes, and had a wonderful experience, and continue to work there on Friday and Saturday nights, possibly more soon. Two Souls is similar to the Rosewood café on Sundays except more on the dinner side, and is owned by a fantastic Malaysian family. Every shift you are fed a delicious meal, and it is GOOD, and they foster a very happy, non stressful working environment. On busy nights, you are often given either a fancier meal such as steak, or a treat, like a beer! Last night was super busy so we were all encouraged to choose a beer from the fridge at the end of the shift and enjoy it while we continued to clean and close the restaurant. James was co-worker who has worked there only six months and on Monday (3/15) we went out to “Yum Cha” to celebrate his upcoming trip as he leaves for the UK. Cherry, my manager, does this with and for every employee, and says herself that she likes treating her employees as extensions of her family. Now that is an atmosphere I can live with. ☺ Oh yah, and my third weekend there I was given a raise without even asking for one. Double bonus.

The good thing was while I was getting these jobs, we were still able to balance that with wwoofing in order to keep our finances intact. During the second week of wwoofing, we continued to work on the room next to the garage, John built the chicken coop, I gave the house as spick and span cleaning, turned over the compost and we fed and watered chickens and ducks. Here are Conrad and John building the back door to the coup (which is in the back right of the picture):



Our lives were made more eventful by the arrival of another wwoofer: an American named Becky….



Becky is not to be confused with her friend and Marian’s, Laura Hautula (’01 Bellermine Grad/ XC runner). Becky helped with the woofer tasks, contributed to our job searching ideas and hung out with us.

By the end of the week John’s job prospects had improved. After feeling slightly defeated by not getting an interview at a Thai restaurant and having Starbucks repeatedly deny his applications he had an interview at a bakery and potentially had a trial shift at Wellington’s top fine dinning establishment (a little fact he was unaware of at the time of turning in the application), The White House Restaurant.

During the weekend, I continued my shifts at the Two Souls Bistro and John started looking into finding a place to live. The house search was difficult. Finding a cheap ‘flat’ that allowed a temporary lease of 8 months proved to be as difficult as finding an employer to hire us. Due to this and general financial concern, we decided to find 1 place to live. After John visited 6 places, the thought of finding fun, normal roommates seemed hopeless. This was after the 50 year male IT professional who felt it was necessary to not button his shirt showing off a nice hairy chest/belly and the OTHER 50 year old male IT professional who liked to wear short shorts, a shirt that did not fully hide the belly that needed to use the ab circle in the corner (https://www.abcirclepro.com/) while the children ran around out of control (note both gentleman had requested roommates in their late 20s or early 30s on their adds…kind of creepy I know). So the search continued.

Sunday we continued to look at 2 more places. The first had an angry girl in the corner that must have disliked foreigners or thought they stunk because she glared at us the entire time we were there. The second was clean, had 3 nice girls who seemed like they could be fun and a good price.

Sunday night we went to an outdoor music event in Petone and saw a few bands play. The Adams were running their coffee cart as well.





By the end of the night the kids were pretty tired. Here's Bella sleeping as we packed the cart up at the end of the festival.